


Not the Only Way to Go

by s0ymilk



Category: Fallout: New Vegas
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Angst, Bisexual Boone, Bisexual Non-Binary Courier, Boone is a socially awkward wreck of a human being, Canon Compliant, Canon-Typical Violence, Canonical Character Death, Other, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Romance, Sexual Content, Six doesn't remember their trauma so it's like it never happened, Six uses they/them pronouns and everyone will respect this, Somehow they manage not to kill each other, Suicidal Thoughts, Suicide Attempt, This Story Has A Happy Ending I Promise, definitely slow burn because Boone is demisexual AF
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-24
Updated: 2021-03-13
Packaged: 2021-03-14 13:09:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 7
Words: 30,257
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29667771
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/s0ymilk/pseuds/s0ymilk
Summary: Craig Boone is a broken man, wasting his life on whiskey and regret. He doesn't want Six to save him. Six may not be in a position to save anyone.(Non-Binary!Courier version, slow burn, canon compliant, Boone's POV)
Relationships: Craig Boone/Courier (Fallout), Craig Boone/Non-Binary Courier
Comments: 17
Kudos: 7





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First thing: there is a male!Courier version, a female!Courier version, and a non-binary!Courier version of this fic. This happened because I started writing it with a female MC, then halway through switched to a male MC, then decided I liked both versions and thought it would be fun to expand to an enby version as well. 
> 
> Six is ultimately the same person in all three versions, so pick whichever one tickles your pickle and you won't really miss anything. I try to limit the changes to what Six wears in certain scenes, how Six interacts with other people in some situations, and certain choices of sexual partners (so I don't violate anyone's canon sexuality). Since I'm manually changing the pronouns and other details in each version, please do let me know if I miss a change somewhere or something seems off so I can fix it.
> 
> In this version of the fic, there is light discussion of what it means for Six to be non-binary, but ultimately I'm not interested in depicting enbyphobia or making people have a hard time accepting Six for who they are. Since Boone is a demisexual man that's only been with women up to this point and has never had a reason to realize his bisexuality, he may later in the fic consider what Six's gender means for his own sexuality and sense of attraction. I would like to state unequivocally that bisexuality DOES include all genders outside the binary, all bisexual characters in this fic will practice the label this way, and there will never be any rhetoric otherwise.
> 
> I am not non-binary. I will attempt to the best of my knowledge and understanding to depict Six accurately and respectfully, but please always feel free to let me know if I get something wrong. There are no other warnings specific to the non-binary!Courier version.
> 
> I typically include chapter-specific warnings at the bottom of each chapter for people to check out (usually only for things that are above and beyond canon events), and I'm always happy to update the tags if anyone has specific suggestions or needs. Just drop me a line. Note the tags - suicidal ideation, PTSD, and war crimes are huge topics in this fic, so please keep that in mind as you read.

The sunlight is stretching in long, tired rays across the Mojave as Craig Boone carefully disassembles his sniper rifle piece by piece on an old towel spread across the ground. Underneath him, the cracked clay and sand are still throwing off a bit of heat in the cooling air, warm against his thighs. The winds have been still today; good for weapons cleaning. No extra grit getting stuck in the gun oil. Boone pulls another piece off and sets it down carefully. 

The residents of Novac are starting to turn in for the night. He can smell meat cooking somewhere. In a few hours, Boone will head up into the Dinosaur for his night shift and spend every minute until 9 AM staring out into the wasteland. For now, he focuses on the pieces of his rifle spread out across the towel, exploded apart like the shrapnel in a frag grenade, and gets to cleaning. Trouble is always just on the horizon. 

Boone has already seen and identified the two individuals walking towards him before he can even hear their footsteps crunching on the hard ground. Not so much walking towards him as ambling along the path that crosses in front of his line of sight. Boone methodically screws a brush head onto a piece of his cleaning gear to start scraping away the carbon caked on his rifle. Jeannie May’s distinct twang echoes across the open space. 

“Some merchant came through earlier saying something about a courier for the Mojave Express coming back from the dead. Said they’d been shot through the head and survived. Don’t that beat all?” 

Her companion, Dr. Straus, shrugs noncommittally. Boone could have told Jeannie May that Straus doesn’t give a shit about couriers or the Mojave Express. She’s likely only putting up with the small talk because she’s high. Jeannie May, on the other hand, will keep talking whether you give a shit or not. As somebody that doesn’t much like conversation, Boone can appreciate that. Makes his job easier the few times he’s forced to socialize. Though he and Jeannie May aren’t exactly the best of friends. 

They meander past, kicking up small bursts of dirt that drift in the dead air, and disappear into the mess of houses situated behind Novac’s run-down hotel. Not so much as a look in either direction. It’s been quiet enough here lately that the residents are getting complacent. Boone huffs a sigh of displeasure to himself and starts pulling at the pieces of duct tape wrapped around the barrel of the rifle. They leave a sticky residue across his palms. A fresh strip keeps the stock together; he tapes until the press of the buttstock into his shoulder is steady and his aim is true. 

Later that night, as he’s at his post inside the dinosaur, he thinks like he does every night about the knotted rope stashed inside the wardrobe in his motel room and the thick, exposed metal pipe running across the ceiling of his bathroom. Just like every other night, he reminds himself that he still has something to take care of. He can’t go anywhere yet. 

The night drifts on, and the stillness of the Mojave rolls over him, minute by aching minute. 

\--

He hears a rumour from Cliff, the gift shop owner, that Nipton has been sacked. A merchant caravan found it razed to the ground, most of the houses on fire. Crosses had been erected along the main strip through the town, each with a dead citizen. Someone had shot every single one of them through the temple. 

_Guess it’s the work of the Legion,_ Cliff says, _but they said a whole squad of Legionaries was found dead in the town too. Blown apart. Guess somebody set frag mines and they just walked right into them. Nobody knows who did it._

Legionaries, this far west. It puts a knot in Boone’s stomach. If somebody had retaliated, that just means that another attack is that much more likely. 

Somebody out there has some balls, though. Killing a squad of Legionaries is tough damn work. 

\--

The days are steadily getting longer as spring blooms in the Mojave. It takes him by surprise every year - one day Boone’s living his days in total darkness from the moment he wakes up to the moment he falls into bed, and then like a specter, the sun creeps faster and faster towards the horizon. Too soon, the gentle warmth of the spring daylight will turn into searing summer heat, so he tries to appreciate this time of year whenever it comes around. 

It’s been getting cloudy out more often, but they haven’t seen any rain since last year. The sun is high in the sky, has been for a couple hours now. Boone checks his watch. Close to nine. Only a few more minutes before he can return to his hotel room and attempt to drift off into restless sleep. 

The rumble of voices rises up through the door to Boone’s ears. Cliff, conducting shopkeeping, and someone else that he doesn’t recognize. A merchant maybe, or a drifter. Not his problem. Boone lifts his rifle to his shoulder and sweeps his gaze across the road in front, looking for movement. Nothing. No-bark Noonan had been out earlier this morning, wandering around and talking to himself like he often does. Boone doesn’t trust that son of a bitch as far as he can throw him. If No-Bark feels the weight of Boone’s crosshairs on his back as he wanders, he never shows it. 

Something is still killing brahmin at the McBride’s farm; Boone’s been keeping an eye out, but he hasn’t seen hide nor hair of anything that might be the culprit. Probably it’s coming from the west, whatever it is. 

A door bangs downstairs; the voices inside the dinosaur stop briefly, then start up again. A short conversation, and then familiar footsteps trudge up the stairs and the door at Boone’s back is eased open. 

Boone waits until his replacement is fully in and ready to take over, then lifts his rifle barrel to the sky and heads for the door. Manny Vargas doesn’t say anything to him, and he doesn’t spare the former Khan even a glance. They part, just as they’ve done for months now, with no interaction. 

Inside the dinosaur, Cliff is talking animatedly to someone on the other side of the counter, a sheepish smile pulling at his lips. Cliff is normally reserved, has a hard time talking with people. Especially with strangers, and this person is definitely a stranger. It’s odd enough to catch Boone’s interest. 

The drifter looks up in his direction. Dark brown eyes set into a tan face with high cheekbones flick up and down his figure nearly imperceptibly. The person has long, dark hair pulled back neatly into a braid. Not unique, but unusual for certain. A worn leather chestplate over a light linen button-up, the sleeves rolled up around the forearms. Extra leather guards on the forearms. The marks of a mercenary, or somebody who spends a lot of time out in the Mojave. Good colours. They’ll blend into the surroundings better, make it harder to get a bead on. 

The drifter smiles at him in too friendly a manner, showing straight, clean teeth. Teeth say a lot about a person. Boone continues walking, not bothering to even remove his sunglasses. 

“Well, he seems like a talkative one.” Boones hear behind him before the door swings shut. He doesn’t bother listening for Cliff’s response. 

Later that day, he empties the last of a flask of whiskey into his mouth and tosses it across the room. It hits the door with a thud, but mercifully doesn’t break. Head spinning, Boone sinks back into the rumpled sheets on the bed and stares at the ceiling. He might have overdone a little bit; he’s feeling a little green in the gills, like if he tried to close his eyes, he might lose the contents of his stomach. 

A thud above him, the sound of footsteps. Jeannie May must have rented out a room. There were days when Boone would have known exactly who it was she rented to, would have compiled their personal information in a little file in his head in case he needed it later. Relative height, for lining up a shot. Temperament, chance they’d cause trouble. Condition of armour, if worn - if the first shot isn’t a kill, it puts you at a hell of a disadvantage as a sniper. He needs to know if a shot to the chest is going to be blocked by anything substantial. 

Now, he listens to the footsteps pacing around the room and tries to stop everything from spinning out of control around him. As much practice as he’s had at that, both with liquor and in life, he’s never gotten much good at it. 

The footsteps pace to the door. It opens; closes; the footsteps disappear down the walkway. Boone sighs, and then stumbles up and into the bathroom, thankful the toilet lid is already up. 

\--

He wakes up with a start, as usual, a few hours later, still mostly drunk. The sun beats down into the room past the moldy curtains. He needs to replace them with something darker and sturdier, but he’s never gotten around to it. He figures he’ll still sleep like shit either way. 

It’s only just now four o’clock. He doesn’t go on shift until nine. Groaning, Boone squeezes his eyes shut against the merciless sun and rolls over. 

As he drifts, his brain passes through an endless series of pictures, one after another. Bitter Springs. The tents at Camp Golf, set up in endless lines leading up to the ugly old resort that served as headquarters. Carla’s neck as she bends over the sink washing dishes. That same neck, sliced in half by the collar wrapped around it, crosshairs sliding up to focus on the mass of chestnut-brown clipped to the back of her head. She’d always liked that clip. Silver, with little pieces of turquoise in it. Boone doesn’t remember where he found it. 

_Bang._ His finger twitches as he pulls the trigger for the thousandth time. Sighing, Boone crawls out of bed wearily and goes to splash water on his face. 

He shows up, as he usually does, an hour before his shift is supposed to start. Manny takes one look at his face, sunglasses still on despite the rapidly approaching darkness, and leaves. Suits him just fine. He takes the sunglasses off, clips them onto the front of his shirt, and gets to business. The Mojave is deathly quiet. 

Boone still struggles sometimes during these long nights of watch, though not as much as the beginning. Too many things to remember, too little self discipline to push those memories away. He’s had plenty of time to work on it, and he mostly does okay now. Sometimes he gets to shoot things, which helps. He brings the sight up to his eye. 

The dark expanse now lights up in brilliant shades of green. There, he sees a flash of movement. A hare, tentatively hopping out from the protective embrace of a bush. There, a slender four-legged form slinks over a ridge. The coyote lifts its head to the moon and howls. The hare darts back under the bush. 

It’s so very simple. Life, surviving as best it can in the harshest of places. If only humans were so straightforward. Boone checks the empty road - almost always empty, nobody travels at night - and goes back to watching the story of the desert unfold before him. 

Every night, this. Minute after aching minute. 

\---

A few days later, around midnight, the darkness is split by a quiet sound down below. Not Cliff; he leaves around the same time Boone takes over watch every night, never shows back up after hours. It might be Jeannie May, or somebody else, coming to tell him something or ask him if he’s seen anything suspicious. Might be McBride, still trying to save his brahmin. Been a long time since someone visited him on watch, though; it’s unusual enough that his heartbeat kicks up a notch, wondering what it might be. 

The door clicks open behind him. He’s already standing in the corner behind the door, where he can keep an eye out towards the desert and still see whoever is coming in. The head that pokes in is not the one he would have expected. 

For reasons unknown, the dark-haired stranger gives Boone another friendly grin, identical to the last one they’d shot Boone’s way, and comes out of the doorway fully, shutting the door behind themself. Boone watches them, an unamused frown on his face. 

“I was told I’d find you here.” they say by way of greeting. Boone’s mind buzzes through the possibilities of what that statement might mean and comes up blank. 

“What do you want?” he says. It sounds harsh because he means it that way. He has no interest in… whatever it is they want. He asks only because he knows it’s the fastest way to get people to leave. If it’s not information that will help him do his job better, he doesn’t need to hear it. 

The smile doesn’t move an inch. This stranger is more persistent than most. In a blatant show, Boone looks down from their face to the pistol on their hip. 10 millimeter, good condition. The holster looks handmade, but not shoddy. It’s excellent workmanship, from somebody who knows how to treat leather properly. 

“I just wanted to admire the view. If that’s okay.” the stranger says. It’s like they take amusement from Boone’s disinterest. That annoys him. 

“I think you’d better leave.” Boone says tersely. “I have a town to protect. You’re distracting me.” He turns away slightly to glance out across the desert once more, half to keep up his watch and half to turn his back to the stranger in dismissal. Still quiet out there. But there’s always a chance this stranger could be a decoy; safer to keep a watch out. 

“Easy, now. I think you can do a fine job of that, even with me here.” the tan-skinned person says lightly. Something catches Boone’s eyesight in the distance; he raises his rifle, sighting down the scope, and sees a tumbleweed bouncing across the ground. 

The stranger moves a few steps forward, crossing their arms to lean on one of the blunt teeth of the dinosaur and look out across the land. Boone immediately feels better now that he doesn’t feel so _watched_ ; his skin stops prickling uncomfortably, his brain unfogs, and he takes in a deep breath to release the tension from his shoulders. 

The silence only lasts for a moment. 

“It’s not often I get to see a view of the desert like this.” the stranger says in that ‘just making conversation’ tone that Boone hates. “It’s pretty. Must be nice to just sit up here and watch it all go by.” 

It’s just a passing remark, but it’s so close to what Boone often thinks himself that it makes him uncomfortable. He doesn’t like it when strangers seem to know him too well. Doesn’t much like it when anyone seems to know him too well. He likes his thoughts secure in his own head and for others to keep their damn distance. His trigger finger is starting to get itchy. 

“I don’t think I’ve ever been to Novac before. Guess I’ve never had reason to pass through this way. I’ll be sad to leave.” the stranger glances over quickly, takes in Boone from the corner of their eye and before looking back out at the desert. “Are you from here originally?” 

_Be sad to leave._ Wait. It’s as sudden as if a bell dings in his head, the way the thought hits him. 

“You’re not from here.” Boone says suddenly, lowering his rifle. It’s easier to look over at the stranger now with a plan spinning around in his head. Boone isn’t trapped in the grips of awkward small talk anymore; he’s examining the drifter carefully instead, thinking about the ease at which they draw people into conversation, about how they might be able to use that to find out information that Boone never could. 

The stranger turns so that they’re facing Boone, still leaning on the dinosaur tooth. Their long hair tumbles over one shoulder. The neat braid dangles almost to their thigh. They’re smiling again, the bright white of their teeth barely dimmed in the moonlight. 

“I’m not. But I’m sticking around for at least one more night. That mean something in particular to you?”

It’s easier to pitch the idea than it should be. Easier than it should be, because as reckless as Boone’s been in his life, this is the most reckless thing he’s done in a while, and he’s sick from the top of his head to the tip of his boots of sitting around and wasting away. So he asks. It might be nice even if it doesn’t work out, because at least he’s finally tried. 

“I want you to find something out for me.” he starts. The stranger blinks, smile fading off their face. “I don’t know if there’s anything to find, but I need someone to try.” 

This is the hard part. He feels his mouth go dry, as if the words are trying to stop themselves from coming out. There’s a long pause. The stranger doesn’t say anything. With a hard swallow, voice a little raspy, Boone manages to keep talking. 

“My wife was taken from our home by Legion slavers one night while I was on watch.” Another swallow. “They knew when to come and what route to take, and they only took Carla. Someone set it up. I don’t know who.”

The drifter frowns, the space between their eyebrows crinkling as he listens. Their air of easiness is gone. 

As a stray cloud passes over the moon, the inside of the dinosaur grows dim, wrapping them both in darkness. A bad night to put plans in motion, maybe. Too many things could go wrong. But if Boone waits any longer, he might as well run out of patience for waiting. Anyway, he’s too the point where if it goes wrong, he’s not sure he gives a shit. He just wants it to be over. 

“You’re trying to track down your wife?” the stranger prompts.

This part is easy to say. The words come out without any thought on Boone’s part, like bullets thunking into flesh in a harsh staccato. 

“My wife’s dead. I want the son of a bitch who sold her.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter 1 warnings: a detailed mention of suicidal ideation including method, violent dreams, alcoholism


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> By the way, the title of this fic comes from Marty Robbins' 'Leaving's Not the Only Way to Go'.

He doesn’t hear anything for several days. Boone spends his watches listening for any sign of movement below and his days staring at the ceiling, leg jiggling with restless, manic energy. He’s more tired than he’s ever been before, but his eyes feel like they’ve been pinned open. He thrashes so hard during the short periods of sleep that he wakes up multiple times in a row on the floor, tangled in sheets. He’s disoriented when he’s awake, constantly looking for things in his apartment, wondering if he’d moved them and forgotten where to. He finds his combat knife in the fridge one day and just stops taking things off altogether when he tries to sleep. 

Nobody talks to him. Nobody gives him a sideways look or does anything to suggest that the drifter has told them what Boone’s asked of him. Boone had sort of expected that they would, is surprised and grateful that they don't.

On the third night after the stranger had come to visit, Boone spots movement on the road. He doesn’t even need his rifle sight to see the two figures strolling along the road; the full moon makes it easy to pick them out. One is wearing a faded white nightgown with a plaid dressing gown hastily thrown over it, large glasses perched on her nose. The other has on a set of pajamas, matching top and bottom like you see sometimes in old magazines from before the war. Dark blue, shiny. 

There’s no reason for his contact to be strolling around with Jeannie May Crawford at three o’clock in the morning. But Boone waits to take the shot. They’re going to give a signal. Boone has to wait for it. A strange buzzing fills his brain; his finger tries to slip down to rest on the trigger, something years of training has cemented him against. 

As they’re walking, exchanging brief conversation, Boone sees the stranger pull something out of their pocket casually. The two of them are crossing the intersection of the road now, his contact leading them to the mound of dirt and debris just on the other side. Slightly higher ground, good for a clean shot. A dark red beret, just a smudge of gray under the moonlight, is pulled over his contact’s head. They do it clumsily, like they’ve never worn a beret before. 

Boone doesn’t waste a moment. Before his contact has even lowered his hands, Boone feels the butt of the rifle kick back into his shoulder. When his sights lower back down, Jeannie May’s body is laying across the dirt mound, glasses cracked and hanging off one ear. The stranger is frozen in place, still holding onto the lopsided beret with one hand. 

\--

The stranger meets Boone up at his station. They’ve pulled the beret from their head and have it in one hand as they shuts the door behind themself again. Their hair is mussed and loose, either from sleep or from the beret. Uncharacteristically, they don’t offer Boone a smile. 

“How did you know?” Boone asks. It makes sense. Jeannie May had never liked Carla. But Jeannie’s not the only one. Manny hadn’t liked Carla either. Boone had never really believed that Manny did it, but…. Well. Manny is another story. 

The stranger holds the beret out to him, letting him swipe it from their fingers with no complaint. They look tired. No trace of friendliness now.

“I found the bill of sale.” the drifter says shortly. Boone stares at them for a moment, then feels a sudden surge of laughter bubbling up in his chest as he digests the words. A _bill of sale._ How fucking perfect. 

“I guess I shouldn’t be surprised.” he says, because he doesn’t want to laugh about this. “It’d be like them to keep paperwork.” 

His head has felt strange without his beret on these last few days. He finds that he’s set his rifle down against the wall without thinking and tugged the beret on. His fingers have gone through this routine a million times now, it must be. But he’s not usually one to let go of his rifle with a stranger so close by. His body is going on auto-pilot and he doesn’t like it. 

Numbly, Boone figures that the stranger is still here waiting for some form of payment. He digs one hand into a trouser pocket and scrapes out all he has that hasn’t been wasted on whiskey or ammo. 

“This is all I can give.” he says. It’s a meager 100 caps, but the stranger accepts it all the same. “I think we’re done here.” 

The person glances at the caps, puts them into the breast pocket of their matching blue pajamas, but they don’t leave. They’re studying Boone in a way that makes Boone’s skin itch, their head tilted just so. 

“What are you going to do after this?” the stranger asks softly, still looking at Boone in that terrible, invasive way. 

Boone is too dog tired to be annoyed. His brain is not coping with the idea that his whole reason for staying here is finally over and his hands are itching for a cigarette or a drink. He answers more honestly than he probably would in other circumstances. 

“I don’t know. Not staying here, I know that.” he starts. Well, maybe that’s not so true. There’s always the rope, and the metal pipe in the bathroom. He doesn’t really need to go anywhere to actually leave, it seems. But maybe he owes a little more for what he’s done. 

He adds, “Don’t see much point in anything right now, except hunting legionaries.” 

That could be a good way to go, instead. Given time, he could buy himself some frag grenades and some spare ammo. Sneak as far into one of their camps as possible, try to do some real damage. It wouldn’t be going out in a blaze of glory, but it would still be worth it, probably. 

He’s so focused on this train of thought that he misses whatever the drifter says next. The stranger must catch that from his blank look, because they repeat themself patiently. 

“I said, why don’t you come with me? The wasteland’s not easy to travel on your own. I could use a sharp eye out there.” 

Boone looks at them, and finds the idea… not as repugnant as he thought he would. Not any worse of an idea than his others, anyway. 100 caps isn’t much payback for what they’d done for Boone. He’d have paid a lot more than that to avenge Carla, so maybe he has some debt to settle. 

Besides, Boone has always been a follower. He joined the NCR because it gave him direction. Married Carla because she was okay letting him trail after her like a lost puppy. Stayed here in Novac because without someone telling him what to do, he’s no more than a puppet with broken strings. He’s not expecting to find purpose again - thinks purpose isn’t what’s waiting for him out in the Mojave - but it could be something, anyway. 

“You don’t want to do that.” Boone says to the stranger. Just to warn them. The stranger deserves a hell of a lot better warning than that, but words have never been Boone’s strong suit, so it’ll have to do. 

The stranger’s grin is so surprisingly _pleased_ that Boone finds himself nearly reeling back from it, as if the drifter had reached out and slapped him across the face. Those clean, even teeth are too much with the two of them so close together. Boone is used to having hundreds of yards and a scope between him and a smile like that. 

“You a lone wolf? I thought snipers worked in teams.” the drifter’s reply is laced with good humour as their first encounter had been, before he’d brought up his request. It’s still just as off-putting. Maybe even a little more off-putting now. The person shouldn’t be treating him so lightly after what had just happened. 

“I’m just saying. It’s not gonna end well.” 

Boone’s second warning, and the stranger still doesn’t listen. Well, there’s nothing he can do about that. 

It feels… right, somehow. He’s taken care of his business in Novac. It’s time to move on. And this opportunity, coming right on the tail of that? Maybe it was meant to be. Boone’s put off his just reward for too long. He can’t hide from it forever. 

\--

Boone thought the questions were bad before, during their first meeting. They don't hold a candle to the interrogation he gets now that they're traveling companions. How old is he, was he in 1st Recon, where was he stationed, why was he staying in Novac. Boone answers in short sentences, even refusing some questions, and still he's talked more in one night than he has in the last six months. 

They hadn't stayed in Novac after....after. Not really any reason to, and there's always a chance that somebody might put two and two together, though he's told his companion he doesn't really expect that to happen. Instead, with the light of the full moon shining strong across the whorls and ridges of the Mojave, Boone had returned to his hotel room and stuffed his meager world possessions into a small pack - a scuffed leather jacket, his weapons cleaning gear, a roll of duct tape. A tin mess kit that he’d stubbornly held onto after he left the NCR, even as Carla insisted he wouldn't need it (one thing she was finally wrong about, seeing as how he couldn't bring himself to use those pretty dishes she'd always loved after she'd been taken). After some deliberation, he'd taken the jacket back out, shrugged it on, and strapped his sleeping bag to the top of his pack. His companion had taken in his absurd lack of possessions with a calm eye and, for once, no questions. 

The person goes by Six and asks Boone to use they/them pronouns. They offer no explanation for either bit of information, and Boone doesn’t ask. Boone didn’t actually ask for a name either, just listened as Six talked briefly about where they were going and what they were looking for. Guy named Benny, check. Stolen possession, check. As long as he gets to kill any Legion he sees along the way, and Six doesn’t tangle with the NCR, he doesn’t much care. 

They mutually decide to stop for the night at an old gas station on the side of the road that looks abandoned. The inside is little more than a one-room shack, with rusted metal shelves taking up most of the interior and a small space cordoned off by a counter and a broken cash register. With some of the shelves lifted and pushed into one corner, there’s just enough space to stretch out with their things. Everything is laid out before Six shuts the door, so they can wedge a chair under it as a lock and not make the two of them hunt around in the dark for too long. 

The feel of hard concrete floor under Boone’s back as he stretches out in his sleeping bag is more familiar to him than the softness of his mattress had ever been, back in Novac. He’s folded his jacket up and shoved it under his head for a makeshift pillow. The scent of the leather and the dusty smell of the sleeping bag make his eyelids blink once, slow, and then droop. He’s _tired,_ but not in the way Novac had made him tired. Maybe tired in a better way. Tired like he’s been working towards something for a long time, and it’s finally over. 

Boone hears Six moving around in the dark, trying and failing to make it to their own sleeping arrangements without bumping into anything. Their choice in curse words is creative. Finally, the rustling of fabric stops and all is silent. 

Being in First Recon means that you’re bunking down with your squad, or at least a roommate, almost all of the time. Boone sometimes thinks he finds somebody else’s slow breaths in the darkness more comfortable than hearing his just his own. He hadn’t realized how true that really was until now, feeling warm and drowsy and strangely restful in this empty gas station laying next to a veritable stranger.

“You don’t talk much, do you?” Six asks quietly. Boone closes his eyes, shifts in the sleeping bag to untwist the fabric around his feet. He doesn’t talk much. It’s his defining characteristic, that he doesn’t talk much, and where he would think people would be happy to be listened to a little more, mostly it makes them uncomfortable. 

He takes a long minute to answer. “No need to.” he says. Better to play it that way, that it’s deliberate. That it’s not just him fumbling for words, taking too long to vocalize and getting left behind in the process. After the last two years of being alone, he’s lost what little skill he had before, even. 

There’s a rustle of fabric off in the darkness. Boone finds himself listening attentively for a reply, realizes that he is just the tiniest bit invested in it. He thought he’d stopped worrying about that a long time ago, but maybe old habits and human characteristics die hard. 

“Probably the right way to go about it.” Six says easily. “I’ve been told I could have a conversation with a brick wall, I talk so much. So I guess we’ll balance each other out.” 

Boone blinks, takes that in. It must be the last Six has to say about it, because he doesn’t hear any more before he drifts off to sleep. 

\--

They head for Boulder City. Six seems alarmed by the rubble of the old settlement, as if they hadn’t been aware about the first Battle of Hoover Dam. Which is impossible unless they’ve been living under a rock since they came to the area. 

Near the middle of the ruins, they spot two soldiers standing post behind sand-bag walls. Boone raises his hand in greeting, lets them sight in on his beret so they know not to open fire. 

The two NCR boys look like they’re on their last legs. Huge dark circles stain the underside of their eyes, and their reactions to Boone and Six are just a little too slow for comfort. They’ve clearly been run into the ground. 

“Afternoon.” one, a sergeant, of them says curtly. He addresses Boone with a respectful nod, eyes lingering on his beret. “The area is currently restricted, there’s a situation going on.”

Boone knows abstractly that Six is silver-tongued, had seen it partially in motion with Cliff. But he apparently doesn’t know the full extent of it. Not until he sees the physical way that Six’s body changes as they approach the soldiers on post. Six’s shoulders go loose and their posture opens up. They go for an easy-going smile, not overly friendly, but just enough to put the two at ease. Just a prospector wandering the wastes, stopping to shoot the shit for a minute. Harmless. 

“You fellas look beat to the ground. Long day?” 

To their credit, the soldiers don’t _completely_ lose their bearing. But Boone is still a little disgusted at the way they mirror Six’s easy stance, hands not leaving their weapons but going just a bit more slack than they should. They never should have let someone who’s fooled that easy into the NCR. But it needs every soldier it can get nowadays, unfortunately. 

“Long day and getting longer.” says the chatty corporal. He tries to match Six’s easy smile, comes off charmed instead. “You need something? Directions?” 

Six says, “Actually, I was wondering if you’d seen a man in a checked suit come through here. Dark hair, looks like he’d have a conniption if his nice, shiny shoes got scuffed?” 

It’s exactly the right play. NCR soldiers work hard and they like to sling a little bullshit about how soft civilians are. The chatty corporal lets out a chuckle, and even the more reserved sergeant lets his mouth tick up at the side a little. 

“No, nobody like that.” says the sergeant. “Only people in the ruins right now are a group of Great Khans.” 

His eyes flick to Boone, clearly decides that it’s okay to give a few more details. “They’re holed up in there with a couple of hostages right now. The lieutenant’s trying to figure out what to do.” 

“Great Khans, huh?” Six replies, with a look of deliberation. “Say, you don’t mind if I speak to your lieutenant? I might be able to help him out with that.”

The corporal nearly waves them on himself, stops at the last moment and looks to the sergeant for direction. The sergeant thinks it over for only a moment before waving them on. It’s frankly ridiculous, how little time and effort it takes for the guardsmen to give in. Boone follows Six through the checkpoint, teeth gritted at the ridiculousness of the display. 

Six takes a different approach to the lieutenant holding the second checkpoint. They turn the chatty stranger approach off, square their shoulders, go for a firm handshake instead of an easy grin. 

“Lieutenant. Your men told me you’re having a problem with some Khans. I’m certain I can help.” 

Firm, confident but not too assertive. Meeting the lieutenant at his own level like another officer might. 

The lieutenant raises an eyebrow, gives them a glance up and down, and then flicks his eyes to Boone. Boone snaps his heels together and gives a salute without thinking. The lieutenant nods curtly and salutes back. 

“So, you have some connections with the Khans?” the lieutenant asks, not without a little suspicion. It’s good to see that not everyone rolls over immediately for Six’s charm. Boone doesn’t let his eyes slide over to Six, but his ears perk up for the answer. If Six _is_ a Khan sympathizer, he’s going to have to rethink this whole idea. The Khans are a thorn in the NCR’s side and Boone doesn’t need to be hanging out with drug addicts or dealers, besides. 

Six tilts their head respectfully in acknowledgment of the LT’s words but holds up a hand in protest. 

“Nothing like that, lieutenant. A courier works with all types, and people can be pretty reasonable, if you talk to them the right way. I’m sure the Khans can be reasoned with.”

Alarmingly, though the LT looks doubtful, he stands aside and gestures them forward. 

All he says to follow up is, “Just might want to be careful going in there with that red beret on. If they open fire, we’ll come in, but it'll probably be too late for you.” 

A random stranger stands in front of him, meddling in a situation that could get his men killed, and he snaps it all up without another question. Disappointing. 

Six turns to Boone at the beret comment and gives him an appraising look. 

“You ever take that off?” they ask, nodding towards Boone’s beret. 

Boone’s mouth twists. “No.” he says coldly. He’ll be NCR until the day he dies. He’s not going to hide that fact just to appease a bunch of murdering drug peddlers. 

Six shrugs, not the least put off by Boone’s curtness. “Mind staying here, then? That way, nobody gets shot.” 

Boone doesn’t answer. Six takes that as consent and disappears into the ruin. Boone wonders if he’s going to be walking out of here by himself. Be a little frustrating to get no farther than Boulder City before he has to trek back to Novac. 

“That’s quite a partner you have there.” the lieutenant remarks after a few moments of silence, crossing his arms over his chest. “It takes a certain type to put themselves in danger like that to help someone else out.”

Boone shrugs, lets out a noncommittal ‘hmm’. “Don’t know them that well, sir. We’ve only been working together a few days.” 

The lieutenant nods tiredly, his eyes still trained on the entrance to the ruins. “Well, here’s hoping they’ll prove dependable to you and me both. I’d like to bring some men and women home safe for a change.” 

Boone doesn’t answer that. He’s too busy thinking about the situation, wondering what Six is getting out of all this. Nobody does things selflessly any more. Boone has seen too much evil to believe in selflessness. There must be a reason behind Six’s going in there, just like there was a reason Six - 

He stops, frowns. _Was_ there a reason Six had helped him? It’s not as if Boone had offered payment before Six agreed. Come to think of it, he’d been so wrapped up in avenging Carla’s death, he’d never asked why it was Six had sought him out. 

Here he was, looking down his nose at these men for falling for Six’s game, and Boone had been played like a fiddle just the same. He’s not sure how to feel about that, other than to be seriously embarrassed. Has he really become so dysfunctional that he doesn’t notice when people are leading him around by the nose? 

Boone mulls over it as they wait for something to happen. It’s nearly an hour before there’s any sign of movement, just long enough that Boone is wondering if he should go in. Suddenly, there’s the crunching of gravel beyond the gate, and then a voice rings out. 

“Lt. Monroe? Sir? It’s Private Gilbert. I’m coming out.” 

A blonde woman in NCR armor eases out from the entrance. Her face is smeared with dirt and she’s unarmed, but otherwise she looks uninjured. Boone slots the stock of his rifle into his shoulder and brings the barrel up on the next person that comes through, but lowers it again when he sees the familiar dark hair. 

“Lieutenant, I’ve told the Khans that you’ll let them through, unharmed, if they let the hostages go. Private Gilbert here is a sign of good faith on their part. Can you agree to that?” Six asks. They look no worse for the wear. 

The lieutenant frowns at them, expression unsure. “I don’t know that I can promise that. I’ve been given the order to kill the Khans, even if it means losing the hostages. We can’t just let them get away with opening fire on an NCR squad.” 

This time, Six placates him with a professional smile. “I understand the logic of that, lieutenant, but I think this will be a better deterrent than opening fire. You kill them and you’re opening yourself up for a revenge scenario. This way, everybody just goes home, a little spooked but no worse for the wear. The Khans will think twice before engaging an NCR squad again.” 

There’s no possible way that could work, no _way,_ but Boone watches in amazement as Lt. Monroe thinks it over and then nods slowly. He’s going to do it. Against explicit orders, he’s letting the Khans go. 

Boone can’t do anything but gape quietly as the lieutenant gives the order for his troops to stand down and let the Khans pass. Six ducks back into the ruins; several dozen feet in, they stop and signals to somebody. Cautiously, several figures step out from the shell of an old building and make their way through the rubble towards the entrance. One of them has his arm wrapped around the bicep of another NCR soldier with bound hands. The Khans keep their weapons pointed to the ground, but the ruins are dead silent, the tension so thick it’s choking. Boone knows that any wrong move, any flinch towards a trigger, and both sides will go out with a bang. 

Slowly, the Khans make their way forward. The Khan with the NCR soldier in tow is dead last, probably to make sure they have a fighting chance of getting out once their last poker chip has been turned over. Boone, the lieutenant, and several other soldiers step out of the way stiffly to let them pass. 

He catches the eye of one of them, a burly guy with a shaved head, and the Khan spits on the ground and glares at him. 

“Fucking baby-killer.” he growls lowly. Boone grits his teeth and takes one more step backwards. It looks like a concession, but really, he just needs more space if he’s going to be able to take a shot. 

The last Khan, a man with a mohawk and a bandanna wrapped around his head, shoves Private Ackerman in their direction. Faster than a bullet, every one of the Khans darts for the exit and is gone in a flash. 

The tension in the air seeps away once the Khans are well and truly gone. Soldiers pop up from their spots of cover while Lieutenant Monroe draws a knife and cuts the rope around Ackerman’s hands. 

“You alright, Private?” he asks as Ackerman massages his wrists. The private nods and sighs in relief. 

“Yes, sir. They didn’t do anything but tie us up. Was still pretty scary, though.”

Boone retreats as the round of accolades starts. Six accepts the handshakes and slaps on the back with good grace, doles a few out themself to soldiers still shaking from their adrenaline high. Gilbert and Ackerman, clearly shaken from their brush with death, thank them at least four times, and then round on Boone as well for a handshake, as if he’d somehow contributed to this whole fiasco. He lets them shake his hand and then retreats even farther before anybody else gets any ideas. 

It’s a good twenty minutes before Six tracks him down. The sun is sinking below the horizon at this point; probably better to find a place to spend the night than keep going. Wherever it is they’re supposed to be going now. 

Six seems to agree, because they head for one of the buildings instead of back out through the city. When they’ve found one with a working door and four mostly intact walls (if not a ceiling), they drop their pack with a relieved sigh and sprawl out along the ground. Boone deposits his things across the room and goes to find somewhere to piss and have a cigarette.

When he comes back, Six has dragged a whole heap of firewood together in the middle of the room and is trying to light it with a piece of flint and a knife. Boone watches them struggle for a minute, then steps up and gestures to take over. Six passes the tools off and watches as Boone expertly lights the pile of wood in a few scrapes. 

“Thanks. Never was any good at that. _Man,_ it’s been a long day.” 

Boone rearranges the wood a little so that the fire will get the oxygen it needs. Within a few minutes, they have a full-fledged campfire and Six is rattling around in their pack for some type of dinner for the two of them. 

The first touches of chill fill the air as wind whistles across the top of the ruined building. It makes the fire shift and sway, putting out a pulse of heat, and Boone leans back away from it so he doesn’t get a face full of flames. The pop and crackle of the campfire is soothing. Softens the silence a little bit, makes it easier to speak up. 

Boone gives up feigning disinterest and just asks. It bugs him that he wants to know, but not enough to swallow his curiosity. 

“What did you say to the Khans?” 

Six stops digging for a moment and looks up at him, surprised. They’d been humming something to themself before Boone spoke up. The play of the firelight across their face brings out their sharp features in stark relief. Six recovers quickly and pulls a couple of cans of pork and beans from their pack, along with a can opener. 

“Same thing I said to the lieutenant, mostly. That everybody wins if they’d just let the two soldiers go. They didn’t want to get into a firefight any more than the NCR did. So it wasn’t a hard sell.” 

Boone flicks his eyes towards Six suspiciously. He’s not convinced by that. Great Khans, missing a chance to kill NCR subjects? It’s a stretch if he’s ever heard one. 

Six catches the look on Boone’s face before he can reschool his features into blankness. For the first time since they’d met, the hint of a frown tugs at the corners of Six’s mouth as they push an open can into the coals by the edge of the fire. “They’re not monsters, Boone. They’re just people. People that make a lot of bad decisions, but people all the same.” 

Boone doesn’t have to speak to make his disagreement with _that_ heard. A disbelieving huff as he leans across his pack does that well enough for him. 

“That why you helped me out, too? Because I’m ‘just people’?” he asks dubiously. Six rolls their eyes, pushes the other can into the coals, and shoves the can opener back into the top of their pack. 

“Guy comes up to you, says, ‘The Legion took my wife, and somebody in town is responsible for it’, what do you expect me to say? ‘Sorry, I misplaced my conscience this morning?’” 

They make it sound simple, saying it like that. Boone _knows_ it’s not simple. This isn’t a little rat-pack group of Powder Gangers here - the Legion’s claws reach deep into the Mojave, and if they had reason to, they’d burn the whole town of Novac to the ground at a moment’s notice. Somebody poking their nose into Legion business? That’s reason enough. Just because Boone’s ready to charge into a Legion camp at the drop of a hat, doesn’t mean everybody wants to tangle with them. Hell, Boone’s only fine with it because he doesn’t care if he comes out the other side. 

“Hey, Boone.” Six says softly, and Boone realizes he’s been thinking too long, let the conversation drop off awkwardly. “Do you, uh… do you want to talk about it? Losing your wife?” 

Boone looks up into dark eyes. There’s a concerned crease between Six’s eyebrows, picked out in stark relief by the firelight. It looks a lot like pity. And it pisses him the hell off. 

“No.” 

He gets up, unpacks his sleeping bag with deft, sure movements. Six doesn’t try to say anything else as he wriggles into the sleeping bag, back to the fire. He’s still staring at the shadows falling across the crumbling cement wall when Six finishes their can of beans and leaves to piss. Two hours after they’re settled into their sleeping bag and their breath has drifted off into an easy quiet rhythm, Boone is still wide awake.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter 2 warnings: mention of suicidal ideation with method.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for all the kind reads, kudos, and comments!
> 
> It's kind of fun to see the difference in reading levels depending on Six's gender. An interesting experiment. I'm particularly pleased that people are interested in this version. We need more non-binary rep!

Their next stop is New Vegas. Of course it is. 

Because they’re not talking about Carla (they’re never going to talk about Carla), Boone can’t blame Six for knowing what that means to him. What he thinks of when he thinks of going to New Vegas. Still, it puts him in a foul mood for the trip. Six doesn’t push, just shoves a tortilla with chunks of gecko meat wrapped in it into his hand and leaves him alone. 

Traveling to New Vegas means a trip to Camp McCarran. Boone hasn’t been back there in years, wonders how much it’s changed. He’s heard they have a Fiend problem now. 

The NCR squad is just moving out as they emerge from their building, Six blinking in the bright sun. Boone returns a friendly wave and watches them strike out into the Mojave. Today is going to be a scorcher if the heat waves rolling across the cracked ground are anything to go by. He’s not quite as prepared for this extended hike in the desert as he should be, and his arms are getting pink from too much exposure to the sun. Stupid mistake. Then again, there’s not much he could have done about it, seeing as they set out from Novac at three o’clock in the morning. 

It’s nearing noon when Boone catches a glimpse of something dull, metallic and round flying through the air towards them. Faster than thought, he sweeps his rifle up, takes aim, and pulls the trigger; the resulting blast knocks Six off their feet and makes Boone stumble back several paces as pieces of grenade shrapnel pierce the air. A throwing spear whizzes through the air and thunks into the ground exactly where Six had just been standing. 

Six pushes to their feet and scrambles towards a rock outcropping on the side of the highway; Boone, too far away, ducks behind an old, rust-out automobile. He waits for a lull in the storm of bullets, snaps up with his rifle, and hits the first Legionary, a recruit, with a solid headshot. The recruit goes down, spear tumbling from his hand. 

Across the way, Six is taking shots with their 10MM without much success. At that distance, a pistol is only taking something down with a lucky shot. Perhaps realizing this, Six holsters the pistol and starts rooting around in their bag. Boone lets out a curse and goes back to shooting to cover them both. 

_Bang._ He gets a Decanus this time, leaving behind one more of each, plus a flag bearer. They’re getting close, and their shots are getting better. Boone hears something whizz by his head and flinches as he feels a sharp pain in his earlobe. He ignores it and pumps another shot into the flag-bearer’s chest. 

Whatever Six is looking for, they find it. Hunched over behind the rock outcropping, they do something with their hands, then stand full up and pitch a long, cylindrical object towards the Legionaries. The dynamite hits the ground right between the last two, bounces once, and then explodes with a deafening roar. 

When Boone peeks back over the hood of the car, nobody is left standing. Cautiously, he slides out from behind his cover and approaches the bodies slowly. Six trails him and watches as he kicks each of the bodies in turn, unloading pistol shots into the heads of those that don’t look definitively dead. Once he’s certain they’re in the clear, he crouches down next to an armless corpse and starts digging through the pockets. 

“Good shooting. Damn, I never expected to find Legion this far west. They’re getting bold.” Six says. They’re crouched next to another corpse, tugging a rifle out of lifeless fingers. Something dark streaks across their jaw. 

Boone resists the urge to roll his eyes at the compliment, though he’s wearing his sunglasses so it wouldn’t matter either way, and shoves a handful of caps into his pocket. It is a bit strange that the Legion had chosen to come after them, but then Boone’s beret isn’t exactly subtle. He wonders if Six took that into account when inviting him along.

“You need a long-range weapon. One with more punch than a ten millimeter.” he says in response. Standing up, he gives the body of the Decanus a kick for good measure. A splash of blood covers his boot. He tries to keep his voice level, but some irritation leaks through anyway. 

“I was just thinking the same thing.” Six says sheepishly. Their eyes flick up to his face and widen. “Shit, Boone. Did you get hit?” 

Boone frowns, realizes the side of his face feels wet, and touches the area lightly. His fingertips come back red. He prods at the area a little more roughly and winces when his earlobe pulses with pain. 

A hand touches his shoulder. Boone jerks back reflexively; Six pulls their hand back and instead leans forwards to study his ear without touching. “You’ve got a chunk missing. Damn, that was a hell of a close shot. Couple millimeters to the left and you’d have been a goner.” 

“I’ll take care of it.” Boone says automatically. The last thing he wants is some stranger pawing at his ear, ‘fixing it’ for him, when he can do it himself just as easily. Pulling a faded handkerchief from his pocket, Boone uses it to wipe the blood off the side of his face and from his ear and then clamps down on the wound to stop the bleeding. 

Six pulls a pouch off their hip and pulls it open carefully, fishing out a twist of waxed paper. The way Boone stares at it blankly when Six tries to hand it over gets a wry smile out of them. 

“It’s healing powder, Boone. Never used it before?” they ask, a trace of humor in their voice. Boone finally accepts it, untwists the waxed paper to look at the gritty powder inside. 

“This is what the Legion uses.” he says flatly, looking up at Six. Six rolls their eyes in response. 

“It’s what everyone around here uses when they don’t have the New California Republic funding them. I made it myself, it’s just dried plants and roots. Mix it up with some water and rub it on your earlobe. It’ll stop the bleeding and speed up the healing process. Unless you want to get an infection from your new pierced ear and die from it.” 

Boone declines to respond to that and uncaps his canteen to dribble a few drops of water on the powder. When he rubs the paste on his earlobe, it sends a tingling, cooling sensation through the wound that cancels out the stinging. Boone accepts the bandage Six holds out and wraps it carefully around his ear. The bleeding has already stopped. 

“A fashion statement if I’ve ever seen one.” Six says teasingly. “Looking a little bit lopsided, though. We can skip the Legion attack and do the other side with a needle instead.” 

Boone recognizes that it’s a joke. He lets out a huff, the closest he’s going to get to laughing, and grunts out a thanks for the powder and the bandage. Six accepts the lukewarm gratitude with good humor and they turn back to their journey. 

They reach Camp McCarran in the late afternoon. Since the train on McCarran is one of the only ways to reach New Vegas safely, travelers like them are allowed onto the camp as long as they don’t cause any trouble. The sentries at the guard check their weapons brusquely and then wave them through the gate and into the front portion of the camp.

Compared to the dinky little areas of settlement they’ve been passing through since meeting in Novac, the sheer size of McCarran is almost breathtaking. Rows of tents march neatly down the central open area of the base. To the left, Boone can hear the distant sounds of gunfire from the shooting range. To the right he hears the grunts of soldiers doing physical training and a sergeant shouting commands to his soldiers during drill practice. Everything is exactly in its place and squared away. Something tense in Boone’s shoulders loosens and melts away; he knows exactly what this place is and what it expects from him, and he knows he can meet those expectations. There’s no uncertainty here.

There’s purpose, too. Having spent the last few years letting his world view shrink to the straight line between a dirty hotel room and Dinky the Dinosaur, Boone forgot how much purpose means to him.

“Is that Sergeant Boone I see?” sounds a familiar voice off to his right. Boone glances over; the man that strides to them and offers his hand looks exactly the same as he had years ago, from the neatly-clipped beard on his chin right down to the polished boots on his feet. Boone accepts the handshake from Major Dhatri with a brief smile.

“I have to admit, I didn’t expect to see you here again. It’s been a long damn time. You’re not here to join back up with First Recon, are you?” Dhatri asks. Boone feels how his body responds by straightening, his left foot inching out to a standard twelve inches from the right as his hands clasp behind his back. He may not be NCR anymore, but old habits die hard. It would feel wrong to talk to Dhatri without showing him the full respect that he deserves “It’s good to see you, sir. Congratulations on your promotion. Unfortunately, I’m just passing through.” 

Dhatri looks a little disappointed, as if he’d actually been hoping that Boone was coming back to the NCR. The pang in Boone’s chest, thinking about the prospect, is not new. 

“Well, that’s too bad, son.” Dhatri replies with a frown. “It was a real shame to lose you and Vargas. Are you in any hurry? There’s nobody left from your time in First Recon, but the new guys would be interested to talk to an old hat like you.” 

Boone frowns, opens his mouth to answer (even though he’s not sure what he’s going to say) and is cut off by Six. 

“No hurry at all. We’d be interested in paying to stay the night, actually, if that’s an option.” 

The major turns to Six and extends his hand, which Six takes with a polite smile. 

“I think we can rustle up a couple extra bunks for the two of you. And who might this be?” 

Boone doesn’t miss the look the major sends him, but he does ignore it steadfastly and let Six do their own introduction. 

Dhatri invites them to eat dinner together with the new squad. The chow is better than it was in his time at Camp McCarran. Though the new first reconners are all strangers to them, there’s still a familiar sense of kinship there. He knows the way they move around each other with practiced familiarity, how they take it as a matter of course that they’ll sit together rather than scatter to their own social circles. First recon goes through so much together that it’s less like a unit and more like a family; he’s glad that hasn’t changed since he’s been gone. 

He gets the newest of the group, Ten of Spades, on one side, and the grizzled Corporal Sterling on the other. Ten of Spades spits out questions like machine-gun fire and doesn’t stop to let him answer them. Corporal Sterling sticks out a mangled hand with no reservations and immediately turns to discussing rifles. Boone eyes the pristine condition of the corporal’s lever-action rifle, compares it to the duck-taped, tied-together piece of trash that he totes around, and grimaces inwardly. It’s embarrassing to have let his weapon fall into such a condition. 

Six is down the table from him, having a one-sided conversation with a quiet, frowning Sergeant that looks vaguely familiar. After a few minutes of study, Boone finally recognizes him. The last time he’d seen the man, Bitter-Root had been covered in blood, pumping shots into the body of a Great Khan at Bitter Springs. Boone heard at some point that Dhatri had adopted a Khan, but he hadn’t thought much about it. Six’s other side is occupied by a female corporal with a buzzcut. 

He takes another bite of his stew, wonders how he managed to get here. Seems like he shouldn’t get a chance to experience all this again. On one hand, he can’t help but enjoy the sense of normalcy. Feels like his past never happened, somewhat. On the other hand, the moment doesn’t fit quite right anymore. He was a different person when he was with the NCR - younger, dumber, with less to lose and more sense of worth. He doesn’t belong here anymore, no matter what Dhatri thinks, and he sure as hell doesn’t deserve the comfort of it. 

“So, where are you two headed? The Strip?” Sterling asks as he spoons up the last of the stew in his bowl. Boone, mouth full, lets out an affirmatory sound and swallows. 

“Some errand of theirs. Don’t know much about it.” 

Sterling huffs a laugh, sets the bowl down in front of him on the picnic table. “Well, you don’t look like the type that needs a talk about the Strip. These youngsters in the NCR these days, they walk in there thinking they’ll come out rich as kings - and then come back out with nothing but the clothes on their back and a week-long hole in their memory.” 

Sterling shoots a look at Ten of Spades, who has the decency to look sheepish instead of protesting. 

“I’m not much of a gambler. Rather be here manning post, if I’m honest.” Boone admits. It’s not a lie - the idea of going back to New Vegas makes something clench tight in his gut. He hadn’t been back since Carla. He can’t see the city’s lights without seeing the way they reflect on her hair, off the sequins on her dress, off the light in her smile. He’ll make it through, but he doesn’t have to like it. 

Sterling claps him on the back and moves to get up. “Well, you change your mind about coming back to the NCR, I’m sure the LT can find some room. We’ve all heard a story and a half about Sergeant Boone, back in his day.” 

The man tips his hat and ambles off. Ten of Spades and the corporal with the buzzcut have ducked outside for a smoke; Bitter Root has long since bolted, and Six has jumped tables, now deep in conversation with a sergeant Boone doesn’t know. He sees the hopeful smile on the sergeant’s face, the way Six is leaning in just a little closer than necessary, and gets the picture. He has no interest in being a third wheel, so he strides out of the tent.

Activity never really stops at McCarran, but it does wind down a bit through the night, when most of the soldiers are off duty. The drilling areas and the shooting ranges are empty now; laughing voices and the shuffling of card decks fill the air instead. The glow of campfires dots the landscape, lighting up faces and the occasional movements of the soldiers patrolling the perimeter. 

Boone blinks; for a moment he’s nineteen years old again, back from a field exercise and dead on his feet as he weaves through the tents to his bunk. The air then had held just the same degree of chill, the clouds had passed over the moon just so. He feels the ghost of a pack on his back and the twinge of a lightly twisted ankle he’d gotten from their hump back to camp. 

If he stands here, just like this, will he stay in this moment forever? 

A burst of shouting from the nearby campfire makes him jump in surprise, and the moment is broken.

He heads back to the tent they’ve been given for the night, ducks in to find his pack, and emerges again with a pack of smokes. The tent has eight racks in all in it, but only he and Six are bunking down here. Left over from a platoon that just transferred, the LT had said. Theirs for however long they needed. Boone leans against the side of the tent, where the framing holds up the entryway, and lights his cigarette. 

He’s down to the filter when the crunch of gravel alerts him to someone approaching. He feels, for the first time in a long time, comfortable enough to stay where he is. He doesn’t even have his rifle slung across his back. It’s a weird feeling. 

Six appears around the corner of the tent. They see Boone standing there, puffing out a breath of smoke, and smile, somewhat sheepishly. The unusual look makes Boone raise an eyebrow at him. 

“Hey, uh…” Six says in greeting, uncharacteristically mumble-mouthed. “I’m going to be… gone. For a while. Maybe all night. But I’ll be back by morning.” 

Six stands there, clearly expecting a response. Boone takes the cigarette from his mouth, drops it on the ground to grind out with his boot, and says, “Huh.” 

Apparently that’s enough. Six turns and disappears into the gloom. Boone sticks another cigarette into his mouth, lights it, and inhales deeply.

It hadn’t been that hard to figure out what Six was angling for, though Boone had never been good with all of that. Relationships, flirting, attraction, that kind of stuff. There’d been a couple girls when he was younger. The only one that had really meant anything was Carla, and she had been the one to instigate their relationship; he’d just gone along with it, dumbfounded at his own good luck. 

He’s even worse at understanding the one-night stand thing. It runs through every social interaction that Boone hates in quick succession - flirting, which is uncomfortable for him to watch and downright nauseating to think of doing - then the proposition, and Boone’s not very good at being forward unless it involves informing a Legionary of their own impending death - and finally the sex, which just doesn’t mean much to him if he doesn’t know the person. Not to say he can’t cross the finish line, so to speak, but after all the effort put into getting there, it’s a bit of a letdown. Maybe he wouldn’t feel that way if he had a silver tongue like Six does. Boone could be bunked up in somebody’s rack right now too, if he could talk like that. 

The thought is one hundred percent unappealing. Boone would rather be in his own bunk staring at the ceiling than in bed with a stranger. Something wrong with him, he guesses. Wrong cylinders firing in his brain or something. He stubs out the cigarette and steps into the tent. 

The tents are rigged up for electricity via generators that he can hear rumbling in the distance, so he’s not left in the dark when the tent flap closes. He takes the time to strip his rifle and scrub all the carbon and grit out from between the parts. When he puts it back together an hour later, the duct tape, string, and bent buttstock cover make him frown. Disgraceful. He should be embarrassed to walk into McCarran with a weapon looking like that. It’s a sign of how much he stopped caring in Novac, that he could let this happen. He resolves to find some spare parts in the near future and get it back to rights. How he’s going to pay with his pockets empty of caps, he doesn’t know. 

There’s nothing left to do. Boone climbs into the bottom rack, tugs his sleeping bag up around his shoulders, and counts the bars on the underside of the bunk over and over until his eyelids droop. 

He’s back at Cottonwood Cove, sighting down his scope. The curve of Carla’s neck appears. He slips his sight up past the ugly collar around her throat to that silver and turquoise clip that still holds her mass of dark hair. He can see, if he tilts just to the right, that she’s crying. He takes aim, draws his finger back slowly, and takes the shot. But this time, the butt stock of his rifle, bent out of shape from wear and tear, slips from the pocket of his shoulder when the recoil hits. The rifle lurches and sends the shot spinning out into the dust. By the time he manages to get the rifle back up, the Legion has already swarmed the area and jerked the slaves to their feet. He catches a glimpse of Carla clutching her swollen belly. Then she’s gone. 

Boone jerks out of sleep so hard he nearly brains himself on the bunk above. His heart is hammering at a thousand miles an hour; it feels like it’s going to burst from his chest. He lets out a long, involved curse and cradles his head in his hands, trying to get his heart and his breathing under control. 

It’s not until after several moments that he realizes he’s not alone in the tent. Flicking his eyes up, he sees a shadowy figure standing just inside the flap of the tent and scrambles for his rifle. It’s not until the figure moves forward and he has his rifle up and sighted in that he sees who it is. 

“Goddamn it.” he says tiredly, lowering the rifle. “Don’t sneak up on me like that.” 

Six sets a flask down on the table and turns to him, holding their hands up apologetically. Their hair is loose from its characteristic braid, and the buttons on the front of their shirt are done up wrong. 

“Sorry. Just wondering if I should wake you. That was a hell of a dream.” Six tries unsuccessfully to make their way to their gear, bumps their shin into the edge of a bunk in the process. “Damn, it’s dark in here. How the hell did you even see me? What are you, an owl?” 

Boone ignores that. “I thought you were going to be gone all night.” 

He can just make out the way Six’s lip curls at the edge as the person rifles through their pack and pulls out their pajamas. “They weren’t looking for somebody to, uh… stay the night. Worried about their bunkmate throwing a fit, I guess.” 

“Ah.” That seems kind of callous. If you have casual sex with someone, isn’t it polite to let them stay the night? Maybe not. Maybe your obligation stops after the deed is done. Boone doesn’t know the social obligations of sleeping with someone, though Six does look a little put out.

Actually, Six is fidgeting in kind of a nervous way. Their head tilts towards Boone as if they plan to say something, but nothing follows.

“Got something to say?” he prompts. Six starts a bit and disappears around the corner of another set of bunks to pull on their pajamas. The tent is silent for a long moment except for the rustling of clothes.

“You haven’t asked any questions yet. About my gender.”

Oh. Boone hadn’t really thought about it. “I hadn’t really thought about it.”

Six huffs lightly, but Boone can see how their movements have gotten a little bit jerkier. They step on the frame of Boone’s bed and vault themself into the top bunk. The tension gets a little lighter as the two of them lose sight of each other.

Six says, “People are usually a little curious. Not that I don’t appreciate your politeness.”

Boone rolls onto his back and stretches his arms out overhead, crosses them so he can rest his head on them. “Seems like if they’re that interested in your business, it says more about them than you.”

He guesses he sees what Six is saying. It’s made him think a little bit harder about how he acts towards Six, anyway. Boone had never realized how much he’d relied on gender to figure out how to interact with people. You treat a woman differently than you treat a man. That’s just how it is. Or how he’s been taught, anyway. When you take that out of the equation… Well, Boone feels himself trying to stick Six in a box sometimes just to make his own life easier.

But ultimately, Boone doesn’t feel any more or less awkward around Six than he does other people. He can make a fool of himself just fine around a person of any gender. 

He doesn't want Six walking on eggshells around him, thinking he's some kind of bigot. Boone's got his issues, but that's not one of them.

“I figure if there’s something I need to know, you’ll tell me. Otherwise, I’ll just keep doing like I’ve been doing.” He says softly.

Silence. A slight rustling from above. Boone exhales, closes his eyes. They don’t say anything else that night.

\--

Six asks him the next morning if he’s interested in taking a side job to make a few caps. Boone thinks about his rifle, about his nightmare, says yes. 

They make their way across the ruins of Old Vegas, deep into Fiend territory. When they find the spot, Boone takes them to the shell of a ruined building almost a klick away and climbs to the top as Six sets up defenses below. 

He lays there for three hours. He misses having a spotter around to help with the eye strain. A full two and half hours after he sets up, the target finally appears - and then refuses to set himself up for a good shot for another 30 minutes. Since he’s heavily armored, it matters more that Boone catches him at the right angle than it does for his less protected friends. Finally, the chance comes. 

Squeeze. _Bang._ Squeeze. _Bang._ Squeeze. _Bang._ Pause. 

Squeeze. _Bang._

No more Fiends in the area. Of that building, anyway. Boone does another sweep, just to be safe, and then hears a thump down below. 

The thump is the body of a Fiend laying on the ground, gurgling through a newly-made hole in her throat. Six kneels to wipe their knife off and slips it back into the sheath. 

“Were those shots by chance our target dropping dead?” they ask. A pleased smile breaks out at Boone’s silent nod. 

They bring the head back, Six taking the responsibility of carrying it by the dirty, discoloured mohawk on top. It smells like a rotting body shoved into an outhouse. Boone is not in the habit of decapitating people, finds the whole process vaguely nauseating even if it’s a better alternative to carrying the whole body back. Watching Six try to keep the neck stump from dripping all over them makes the caps seem not worth the process. 

When they get to McCarran, though, and he learns why Betsy spits on the head with such a hateful grimace, he changes his mind. Six presents Cook-Cook’s head to Dhatri with a proud flourish and drops half the bounty into Boone’s hand.

When Boone pulls the trigger that night in his dream, it’s a Fiend on the other end. The buttstock of his rifle, hammered flush to the stock and gleaming from care, doesn't slip even a millimeter.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter 3 warnings: Brief discussion of Six's gender, and Boone reflects a bit on how he has to change his behavior and thinking to be respectful of Six as a non-binary person. Boone has a flashback to when he killed Carla. Boone also says some mean things to himself about the way he experiences attraction. Asexuality is valid. There is nothing with him, and if you're on the ace spectrum, dear reader, there's nothing wrong with you either.
> 
> It was fairly difficult to write a cisgender person thinking about a non-binary person's gender in a way that was both realistic to the thoughts a cisgender person might have but isn't awful for a non-binary person to read. I hope I struck a decent balance? I am always open to feedback. Let me know. Also, if you're non-binary, please let me know whether you prefer a fic that just acknowledges someone's non-binary gender and moves on, or a fic that occasionally touches on the topic. Like I said, I'm not here to do a deep dive into the ways post-apocalyptic America would be shitty to non-binary people, but I also feel like talking about it just a bit gives the relationship between the characters some depth.


	4. Chapter 4

They go to New Vegas. 

Stepping out onto the Strip is a lot harder than he thought it would be. The last time he’d been here was with Carla, and he’d had eyes then only for her. He’s forgotten what a different world New Vegas is. 

The same sun that lights up the Mojave glistens more suggestively in this place. Casino lights reflect off tie bars, oiled hair, glittering jewelry. To his left, a showgirl from Gomorrah makes a ‘come hither’ gesture at him. Undulating her taut, glistening stomach like a sidewinder, she leers at him as he stares, transfixed. When he finally pulls his gaze away, he’s grateful to see that Six is looking in the opposite direction. Boone wonders if they know what a bumbling yokel they brought with them. It’s all he can do to keep from picking at the sleeve of his faded t-shirt; his no-nonsense attire feels shabby juxtaposed with the peacocks strutting around them. 

They get a room at the Vault 21 hotel, which is better than staying at any of the casinos. Most of the Vault 21 clientele are off-duty NCR and regular folks visiting on a budget, so they aren’t quite as glitz and glam as the rest of the New Vegas population. A few of them are professional gamblers; Boone sees them parked at the tables in the dining area, dealing out hand after hand of Blackjack and muttering to themselves. 

Six rolls into their shared room, drops their pack, and starts digging through it immediately, pulling out a dark bundle and small bag. Boone watches them disappear into the bathroom from where he sits on the bed, unlacing his boots. 

As uncomfortable he feels in Vegas, it does feel nice to relax a bit after several days on the road. Unwind. Maybe they can hit the diner a little later, grab a beer. If Six wants to go out gambling, Boone is happy to stay here by himself and take a breather. 

It’s a while before Six comes out of the bathroom, and when they do - 

Boone blinks. 

Gone are the practical linen button-down and heavy boots. Six has replaced them with a smart pinstriped suit that looks practically bespoke by the way it hugs their broad shoulders and trim waist. When they tilt their head to clasp a wrist watch on, Boone sees that their hair has been freed of its usual braid and is instead twisted up into a complicated bun, bringing attention to their elegant high cheekbones and dark eyes. They don’t even look like the same person Boone had walked in with.

Six looks up and catches Boone’s gaze. “Do I have something on my face?” they ask, not without amusement. Boone looks away quickly and starts fiddling with something on the side of his pack, embarrassed to have been caught. 

He’d figured Six for a looker, but hadn’t really thought much about it. Not like Six was trying to play it up under that leather chestplate and coated with dust from the road. But the outfit adds something more than attractiveness. It makes them look like they _belong_ here. Dressed like that, they could be any of the young moneybags Boone’s seen at the craps table with a drink in one hand and a gorgeous suitor in the other. They don’t look like someone that should be slumming around with an NCR dropout. 

“You interested in going out? Would be nice to have some company that can hit a mark at a mile away.” Six says into the mirror as they smooth out the front of the suit From the back, Boone can see that the hair at the nape of Six’s neck has been braided elegantly up into the bun. Looks like something Carla might have done for a night out. She was forever calling Boone into the bathroom to help her pin something up or twist something some way. Seemed tedious, but with Carla the end result had always been worth it. 

“No. ...not my scene.” he says tersely. Six catches his eye in the mirror, looks disappointed, but doesn’t push. They just turn their attention to slipping on a pair of glittering heels. Boone pushes himself up from the bed and disappears into the bathroom to wash his face. 

He takes his sunglasses and his beret off and turns the faucet on. The water feels good against his overheated skin. Too much sun exposure. 

“Boone? I’m leaving… I’ll be back later.” Six calls through the door. Boone grunts back a response, listens for the slam of the door. Sighs in relief when it finally comes. Being alone sounds like the best plan of action right now. 

What the hell’s he doing here, holed up in New Vegas with this person? Boone couldn’t fill a page with the things he knows about Six. It suddenly seems foolish to have trusted them so much, to have agreed to this hair-brained trek across the Mojave just because Six asked him to. Hell, he knows _Cliff Briscoe_ better than he knows Six, and Boone can count on one hand how many times he’s said so much as a word to Cliff Briscoe. 

He still feels overheated, and is slightly confused to note that the front of his pants has gone a little tight. He hasn’t felt a real urge for sex since...well. He hasn’t felt it in a long time. He thinks it was the hair, bringing up memories of Carla. Sometimes Carla had called him into the bathroom to help put it up...and sometimes she’d called him in for other things. He hadn’t thought about that in a long time. 

Standing there at the sink, Boone unzips his pants, pushes down the front of his underwear. Spitting in his hand, he wraps it around his half-erection and gives it a few experimental tugs. 

He tries, as always, to keep his mind blank, or imagine a stranger under him, a mishmash of the women he’s met over the years, but it never works. With a guilty wince, he remembers burying his hand into that hair, pulling it gently from the bobby pins and letting it cascade down Carla’s back, and the flesh in his hand stiffens immediately. 

He finishes into the palm of his hand, grimaces, and cleans himself off in the sink. Not really that much more fulfilling than his pragmatic sessions in his Novac hotel room. The stress release feels nice, but that's it. And he always feels ashamed of himself after he thinks about Carla like that. It sullies her memory for her to just be a randy image to him. 

Tucking himself back into his pants, Boone stumbles out of the bathroom and sets to work stripping down his rifle, so he can install the new parts he’s bought. 

\--

Six comes back early in the morning, so long after they’d arrived that Boone had stopped worrying about sharing the one bed and just fallen asleep. He comes awake all at once at the sound of the door slipping open. Six is barefoot, glittering heels in one hand and a dark mark like a bruise on the side of their neck. 

Boone checks his watch. 0325. He passes a hand over his bleary eyes and sighs. 

“Sorry. I was trying not to wake you.” Six says apologetically. Boone waves them off, slips his faded t-shirt over his head. Six looks tired and not particularly happy about...wherever they’ve been. 

“I got us a better place.” They say as they sit down, heavily, on the other end of the mattress. Their hands go up to tug at the tie around their neck with a total lack of enthusiasm. “You mind moving?” 

Boone shrugs. If he’d asked where they were going, he might have done differently. 

When Six turns them onto the steps of the casino, Boone stops in place and gives Six an incredulous look. Even for someone who doesn’t give a shit about the Strip, he knows about this place. 

“You can’t be serious.” he says disbelievingly. Six shrugs and gives him an exhausted glance, as if to say, ‘what can you do?’ 

They walk into the Lucky 38. Nobody stops them, not even the Securitrons that flank the inside of the entrance, but he thinks he hears a couple of surprised shouts from the crowd milling about outside just before the door shuts behind them. 

The Strip is as bright and boisterious at 5 AM as ever, and yet the inside of the Lucky 38 is dead silent. Lights flick on a moment after the doors close, illuminating an empty gambling floor. They must be the first people to have seen the inside of this place in years. He stops and runs his hand over a tabletop. Polished to a shine, but only to keep the dust off, not because anyone had been using it. Casinos aren’t meant to be this quiet. It sends a shiver up his spine. 

Boone follows Six silently to the elevator and up to the High Roller Suite, listening to the securitron manning the controls’ attempts to make awkward, cheery conversation in a twangy accent. Six at least manages a sincere ‘thank you’ to the robot before following Boone off the elevator. 

Boone’s been thinking hard since Six had woken him up this morning, about Six, about the gossip in Novac over the month before he’d left, about why they’re here in New Vegas. He looks at Six, really _looks_ for once _,_ and notices a thin, round scar just at the edge of their temple, almost invisible if you weren’t looking for it. 

“I think we need to talk.” he says, before Six can disappear into their suite. The edge of Six’s lip quirks up into a humourless smile. They nod and gesture Boone in. 

“You’re that courier that came back from the dead.” Boone says without ceremony, before either of them have even sat down. Six turns their back to Boone and busies themself dumping their pack in the corner. It takes far longer than it has any right to. 

“....yeah. That’s me.” They say finally, giving up on looking busy to slump down on the edge of the bed. Boone stays standing, arms crossed over his chest. “Benny? The guy I’m looking for? He found me in Goodsprings, him and the Khans that were holed up in Boulder City. He took my package, shot me in the head, and threw me into an unmarked grave.” 

_Christ._ Talk about a rough day at work. No wonder they’re still alive after their trek across the desert - traveling with somebody with luck like that, it couldn’t have been any other way. A hungry gecko’s not going to be what gets Six, that’s for sure.

“So how’d you survive?” he probes cautiously. Six’s fingertips slide to the scar on their temple, rubbing against the shiny skin unconsciously.

“That robot in the elevator, Victor? He saved me. Mr. House was using him to track the package across the Mojave and make sure it got to New Vegas. Victor pulled me out of the grave after I got shot, saw I was still alive, and got me to a doctor. I woke up in Goodsprings. And let me tell you, I had a hell of a headache.” 

The joke makes Boone huff, just a little. He appreciates that Six can have even the slightest sense of humour about this situation. The silence falls in the room again for a few moments. 

“So what are we doing here?” he asks, finally giving in and sinking into an ornate armchair so he doesn’t have to stand any longer. Six shrugs, picking at the cuff of their collared shirt.

“House called me here and told me to get the chip for him. I tried...and I failed. Benny was gone, chip with him, when I woke up.” 

_When I woke up._ Boone doesn’t have to think too hard about what that means. No wonder Six had dressed up so much. He doesn’t really get it, how Six can jump into things like that. He doesn’t mean it in a demeaning way or anything, it just sounds like an….uncomfortable situation. Doesn’t look like it did Six any good, either. Not judging by the bags under their eyes, or the way the edge of their mouth is tugged uncharacteristically into a frown. It would take some gumption to jump into bed with a man that shot you in the head. 

“Are we going after him?” he asks. Six’s fingers dart to the scar again, their whole body a tense line. 

“I think…” they start, but the sentence sputters out. It’s a long moment before they start again. “Think I need to take a break before that happens. A week or so. Just to recharge.” 

Boone shrugs, stands. “Fine by me.” 

He feels Six’s eyes on his back as he walks out of the room. He thinks about saying something to make Six feel better, but he can’t think of anything, so he shuts the door behind himself carefully and goes back to bed. 

\--

They stay a few days in New Vegas. Boone sleeps like shit. He spends most of his time playing pool in one of the back rooms and drinking from the strangely well-preserved stock of liquor at the bar. Doesn’t seem like anyone is going to miss it. 

Six is a specter. Sometimes they’re gone when Boone gets up in the morning. Sometimes they stumble out at four in the afternoon looking sleep-deprived and miserable. Boone thinks about saying something to them, but it doesn’t feel like his place to pry. Instead, after the third day of it, Boone suggests they go back to McCarran, and Six agrees. They spend most of the trek back in silence. When they walk back onto the base and Six claps him tiredly on the shoulder, Boone figures it was the right call.

Their ‘break’ comes in the form of errands for the NCR. Picking up supplies, fixing things, busting a rogue supply sergeant. Feels good to be back in rig, accomplishing something. The tent they’d shared before gets unofficially assigned to them for their use while there. Boone has no complaints about that either - he finds that when Six is in the bunk above him, breathing in a slow rhythm, he’s able to drift off and get some decent rest. It’s usually only when Six stays out overnight with someone that Boone finds himself waking up in a cold sweat. Boone thinks a couple of times, in those lonely moments, about asking for a spare rack in the 1st Recon tent, but it feels cowardly. He should be able to deal with his own problems. 

Six ingratiates themself into 1st Recon surprisingly easily, spending evenings talking with Sterling or playing cards with the LT and Ten of Spades. Boone never sees the sergeant from the first night again, so Boone doesn’t know who it is that Six occasionally visits. He doesn’t ask. Boone spends plenty of time with 1st Recon too, is surprised to find Betsy joining him now and then for a smoke. He and Sterling have a couple of friendly shooting competitions, interspersed with rounds of funny Ranger stories and mock arguments about the merits of bolt- vs. lever-action rifles. 

They take out two more fiends for Dhatri; the resulting bounty puts money in their pockets and has Dhatri slapping Boone on the shoulder anytime they meet, dropping increasingly blunt hints about coming back to the NCR. The urge gets stronger every time he’s asked. 

On the fifth day, Six putters around in the tent in the morning and finally turns to him, looking as if they’ve got something on their mind. Boone, in the middle of rolling a cigarette, licks the edge of the paper and assembles it carefully as he waits for Six to start talking. 

“I’ve been thinking about what you said when we took down those legionaries. About getting a long-range weapon. But, uh… I don’t know much about that. Would you be willing to teach me?” they ask, rubbing at the back of their neck. Boone sticks the cigarette into his mouth and thinks it over. 

“You’re asking for sniper lessons?” he clarifies. A nod. “...yeah. Sure. After breakfast.” 

The NCR has set up a platform along the west side of the wall for target practice. In the distance, dummies have been set up with large black circles painted on their chests for targets. Boone thinks about checking out a rifle from the armory for Six - and then slings his own over his back instead and heads for the stairs. Six follows. 

The range is a beautiful thing. Gun proficiency and safety is taken very seriously in the NCR, so on the range soldiers move like a well-oiled machine. Boone remembers the first time he’d seen it, was just as impressed as Six seems to be now. One of the reasons he was sold on the NCR, really. He crosses behind the row of soldiers sighting in on their targets, careful not to get in their space or knock over their things, and finds an empty spot down at the very end. 

Six stands back and lets him set up. Boone stacks a couple sandbags to rest the barrel on, lays out ammo to one side, and gestures Six over. 

“You know anything about shooting a rifle?” he asks. Six shakes their head, looking sheepish. 

“No, believe it or not. Missed that lesson growing up, I guess.” 

They look as if they expect teasing. A lesser man would do so; Boone just lays his rifle down carefully and drops into the prone, pulling the rifle to his shoulder and resting the barrel on the sandbags. 

“Look at everything I’m doing.” he says. He’s never been a great teacher. He’d been taught all the basics just like any NCR recruit, but shooting comes pretty natural to him; makes it hard to think about all the details, the stuff he does unconsciously. “It’s all about support. Your body is just like a cradle for the rifle. Throw your legs out wide, get good contact between your elbow and the ground surface. Buttstock goes into the pocket of your shoulder. Then breathe out and take the shot.” 

He demonstrates, splaying his legs out comically wide. A wiggle of the hips to get them into the right position and press his stomach into the ground. He sights in, finds himself off target, and moves his whole body slightly to the right. The big black circle comes into focus. On a sunny, windless day like this, making calculations isn’t hard at all. Boone breathes in, breathes out, and in that natural space between breaths, he draws back on the trigger. 

When he gets up after a few shots, Six takes his spot, trying awkwardly to recreate what he’d done. Most beginners think it’s easier than it really is in practice. As much as it comes natural to him, it’s not a natural thing, shooting a gun. When Six is finally settled into an approximation of the position and glances up at Boone for direction, Boone kicks their legs out wider and then kneels down next to them to see their setup. 

“Shift backwards some so your forward arm isn’t so close to your body. Yeah, like that. Now, hand should be propping here - don’t muscle the rifle into position like that. You’ll just get tired. Relax, see where your sights are, and then adjust your entire body so you’re on target. Yeah. You got it?” 

Six makes a frustrated noise and shakes their head. “Doesn’t feel right. And I don’t think my eye is in the right position - the scope is lining up weird.” 

Boone is so in his element that he doesn’t even think when he stretches over them to check their positioning. The sudden stiffness of the body under him makes him realize what he’s doing; Boone jerks backwards so he’s out of Six’s space and kicks himself for being so careless. Plenty of soldiers come in with reason to like their personal space. Boone had gotten into the habit of telling them before he moved in close, let them know that he was going to touch them or hover over them, so they had a chance to prepare. Guess a man forgets those things, after a while. 

“Sorry. Should have warned you. I’m gonna lean over, see what the problem is. That okay?” 

The tension has drained out of Six shoulders as fast as it came on; they let out a mumbled ‘yeah, sure’, and wiggle back into position. Boone slowly leans forward again and scrutinizes them; Six doesn’t freeze up this time. 

“You need to push your cheek more firmly into the rifle. Gonna move your head.” he warns. Boone’s tried just explaining it, but he hadn’t gotten it himself until his instructor showed him how to do it properly. Carefully, he reaches around on the left, wraps his hand around Six’s jaw, and moves their face so that his cheek is as smashed into the rifle as it’ll go. “Should be able to see down the scope better now. Yeah?” a nod. “Better for recoil too. That much contact, you won’t be knocked out of position when you take a shot. You on target?” Another nod. 

Boone pushes to his feet, steps out from over them. “Take a couple shots. Slow and easy, don’t jerk the trigger.” 

Boone pulls up the binos he’d borrowed from Sterling and watches as Six fires a few rounds. A decent grouping, fairly close together. They all hit the dirt several feet short and just to the right of the target. Boone kneels and adjusts the sight on his rifle. 

“Good. Would’ve clipped it if we’d zeroed the rifle before coming out here. Gotta teach you how to adjust for wind too. I’ll explain that.” 

They spend a good two hours in practice. By the end of it, Six is proficient in the prone and familiar with the kneeling and sitting. When the two of them finally pack up and head back to base, they hand the rifle back with a pleased flush of colour in their cheeks and a big grin. It’s a nice change from the moping they’d been doing recently. 

“No wonder you joined 1st Recon. Hitting your target from that distance is a hell of a rush.” 

Boone’s feeling good himself. He likes seeing other people enjoy shooting. He’d signed up for 1st Recon for the pay mostly, but also because it meant doing more of something he loves. Hell, he remembers helping his rack mate from boot camp out on the range, back when Yamamoto had -

“What kind of missions did you go on with 1st Recon?” Six asks. Boone barely hears the question.

Boone hasn’t thought about Yamamoto in years. The last time he’d seen Yamamoto, he’d been–

He’d been –

“Boone?”

He’d been caught by the Legion two months after they’d come to the Mojave. The Legion strung him up on a cross. Boone had watched a dribble of blood snake down his chin from his cracked, bleeding lips, seen the way his red skin blistered in the pitiless sun. 

The memories follow in quick succession. Boone remembers bringing the gun up, seeing Yamamoto’s face through the scope. Yamamoto turns into a young mother in a Khan dress, stumbling over her feet as she tries to flee from Bitter Springs. Then suddenly she’s Carla, a mass of dark hair with a silver clip in it and a hand on her swollen belly. _Bang. Bang. Bang._ His chest gets tight, his skin cold even though the sun is blazing down on them. He hates how easily the memories come back. They sit just below the surface, ready to boil up at the slightest provocation. 

The first mercy killing was the worst of them. Not just because it was the first. Because it was a young soldier he’d seen at the chow hall the week before laughing and joking with his squad mates. Boone’s squad leader had given the order to take them out. He’d sighted in on that soldier’s face, close enough to see the pain and suffering in his eyes, and took the shot. 

Backup had arrived an hour after. They’d stormed the Legion camp with no issues, no casualties. 

He could have waited. But he followed orders. 

Sometimes he wants to talk about it, _needs_ to talk about it, but he doesn’t think he has the words to do it the right way. Even if he did, most people wouldn’t understand. Certainly not a civilian. You don’t just _refuse_ orders. And yet… and yet he was his own man too. Surely he owed it to those men to delay the shot just an hour. To at least have asked. 

He doesn’t know whether Six would give him pity or condemnation if he talked about it. He doesn’t deserve either. What he deserves is a bullet to the skull, but maybe he’s just too much of a coward to ask for it. 

“Boone.”

Carla had asked, a few times, and he’d never told her. On some level, Boone thinks she understood that she didn’t want to know. Things were better that way. Boone could forget, sometimes, or at least pretend that he did. Carla was willing to forget too, and he’ll always remember how precious a gift that was. 

“ _Boone.”_

Six bumps his elbow, which snaps him back into the present moment. He can’t remember what Six had asked him. It doesn’t matter. They’re back at their tent. Boone turns his back on Six and pulls out a cigarette. After a moment, Six gets the hint and walks away.

\--

Six starts acting weird after that. Every time the two of them are in the same vicinity, Six gets a look on their face like they’re struggling with something. A few times, they look up at Boone like they have something to say, but they never actually start any conversation. Boone asks a few times what their plan is, once they get going after whatever it is Six is looking for, but Six won’t even tell him which direction they’re headed. 

Boone hasn’t gotten this far in life without a healthy dose of suspicion. The third time he asks and Six deflects the question, he starts thinking maybe Six is doing it because they know Boone won’t like the answer. 

\--

Betsy joins him one night when he’s eating chow alone by one of the campfires. She looks like she’s come from the showers, her short hair spackled with droplets of water and her hygiene bag rolled up inside her towel. Seating herself in the dirt heavily with her back propped up against a log, she throws the bundle down beside her and lights a cigarette. 

“Where’s the pretty thing that’s normally attached to your hip?” she asks by way of greeting. “Don’t often see one of you without the other.” 

Since coming back from New Vegas, Six has been gone more often in the evenings. Boone had seen them in the chow hall earlier, but Six had just given him a distracted wave and disappeared. It’s almost like Six is avoiding him. 

He takes a bite of his chow - some kind of corn and noodle thing that’s probably just whatever was left in the pantry thrown together and baked - and makes her wait for a response while he chews. Sometimes it irritates her, and Boone’s not above a little bit of needling. 

“If you want a piece, you’ll have to get in line.” he says finally. It’s more of a joke than anything else - Boone knows that Betsy only goes for women. Betsy snorts. 

“Not my type. Neither are you, before you ask.” she says laconically. 

“Wasn’t planning to.” 

“Good.” 

He finishes off his chow and sets the plate aside. Betsy fishes another cigarette out of her blouse pocket and offers it over. Boone takes it and lets her light it for him, sighs in relief as the nicotine hits him. 

Female soldiers are a rarity in 1st Recon, and even outside 1st Recon they’re not well-received on the front lines in general. Plenty of male soldiers still believe that females can’t shoot for shit, despite the evidence to the contrary. In the early days of his service, despite having a female squad leader himself, Boone had shared some of those dumb, sexist sentiments. The next time they went to the shooting range, his squad leader had put every round of her first magazine right into the crotch area of the man-shaped silhouette on Boone’s target. They never talked about it, but Boone was smart enough to pull his head out of his ass. He’s learned to respect female NCR soldiers for the shit they put up with from their male counterparts, and enjoy having conversations that aren’t all about posturing and comparing battle scars.

“How long you been with 1st Recon?” he asks. They’ve talked here and there, but he’s never asked. 

“Just over a year and a half now. Been here at McCarran for about six months.” 

“You must have joined right after I left, then.” Boone muses. 

“Ha. Leadership had a lot to say about Sergeant Boone. Could have left us smaller shoes to fill.” 

“They tell you about the first time I spotted a Legion patrol?” Boone asks. Betsy shakes her head. “Hadn’t been in the NCR but a month. Saw ‘em coming over the hill while I was on watch and we were camped out. Red feathers, leather skirt, everything. I sounded the alarm and woke everyone up. Then the LT sighted in on them. Ended up being a kid with a red handkerchief and a skirt, traveling with her family. The guys busted my balls for weeks.”

Betsy’s cackle is enough to make Boone smile a little bit too. She projects an aura of toughness, but she’s not afraid to take it easy and have a laugh, at someone else’s expense or her own. They trade some stories back and forth of fuck-ups and funny situations. Betsy had once been dared to try riding a Bighorner and got caught by the base commander. One of Boone’s squadmates got so wasted on a trip to New Vegas that he passed out, so they propped him up in a booth at the Tops and put Boone’s sunglasses on him to hide it. Betsy was once chased out of a house stark naked by a man who never realized his wife was a lesbian. 

“What’s your take on things here?” he asks when the conversation hits a lull. “Situation seems a little shittier than when I was in.” 

“It’s a lot shittier.” Betsy says with a grimace. “NCR’s stretched too thin, and General Wait-and-See has us wasting our time picking off Fiends. I didn’t join to headshot junkie bitches that are too hopped up to even know they’re the bad guy. I joined to fight real threats.” 

Boone remembers feeling that way. Time and too many desperate circumstances had taken care of that. He wishes his whole enlistment had been shooting violent junkies. Maybe then he’d actually sleep at night. But Betsy’s got her own demons already. After what happened to her, it might be harder to stay here and pick off small fry. Maybe she felt like what she’d sacrificed was worth more than that. 

“Sometimes I feel like we shouldn’t even be here.” Betsy says with a sigh. “Between New Vegas and the Legion… well, fuck. They’re both going to suck the life out of us, and then destroy each other.”

“Was for the dam.” Boone reminds her. “The Republic needs it for the land back home just as much as they need it here. And you can’t hold the dam without holding everything else.” 

“Won’t matter if we get blasted off the map.” Betsy counters. Which...she’s right. If the NCR overextends itself and collapses, they might as well have not done anything at all. Whether you try to protect people doesn’t matter. It’s whether you succeed that matters. 

Boone knows. He’s failed enough times at protecting someone to know. 

“What’s your partner think?” Betsy asks. “They pro-NCR? I guess they must be a little bit, if they’re here with you.” 

“Don’t know them that well.” Boone says for the thousandth time. Every time he has to say it, it raises more questions in his head. “They’ve never said anything against the NCR, anyway. Seems to mostly do their own thing.” 

Boone remembers the last time he’d asked Six what their plan was, how quickly Six had changed the subject and disappeared. Something about it feels wrong. Boone needs to corner them and get a straight answer, he thinks. He’ll bring it up next time he gets a chance. He picks up his tin plate and pushes to his feet, grunts a quiet good-night to Betsy and takes off into the darkness.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter 4 warnings: Masturbation. More flashbacks. Specifically, Boone remembers some of the 'mercy killings' he's been involved in.
> 
> I have never been a combat sniper in post-apocalyptic America, so I have no idea if their style of shooting differs from that of a regular rifle. If you ever become a combat sniper in post-apocalyptic America and it turns out this depiction was wrong, don't come for me.
> 
> I accidentally posted the wrong version earlier. If you managed to see the update before I fixed it, sorry about that.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> PRE-CHAPTER WARNING: There is a real-time description of a suicide attempt at the end of this chapter. If you'd like to skip it, stop reading at the point when Boone gets to Novac. I will put a non-graphic summary of this part at the end of the chapter for those who want to know what happens without reading it. Please take care of your mental health and read with caution.

“That the last one?” Six pants, eyeing the rooftops with suspicion. Boone backs up to get a better view. Nobody visible on top of the building. Leaning his rifle carefully up against the wall, he jumps up and catches the roof of the shed, pulls himself up on top of it. It gives him enough height to see across the space, make sure all the Fiends are dead. 

“Clear.” he calls down and jumps off the shed. 

Six is knelt down next to the body. They pull the tarp from their pack and start spreading it out next to the corpse so the two of them can roll it up before they carry it. After being left out in the sun for a few days, it stinks to high heaven. The stench is so bad it makes Boone’s eyes water.

It’s worth it, though. No NCR soldier deserves to rot in the sun if there’s another option. And it’s sick of the Fiends to use his body as a trap for other soldiers. 

Boone joins them on the other side of the body to help them heave it onto the tarp. Once it’s rolled up tight, Boone slaps some strips of duct tape on the tarp to hold it together, and the deed is done. The thick sheet controls some of the smell, for which Boone is grateful. 

“Ready?” Six asks. Boone nods, hands them his rifle, and waits as Six slings it across their back. Then they and Boone grab each end of the roll and lift it into the air. Morales isn’t particularly big, but with full NCR armour on, he’s still heavy. It takes a lot of fumbling for them to get the body splayed over Boone’s shoulders where he can carry him the most effectively. 

“Let’s go.” Boone grunts. Six nods, pistol in hand, and they step out. 

It’s only a half-mile or so to the closest NCR checkpoint, and they can take the road the whole way, so Boone doesn’t have to worry as much about stumbling over something as he would if they were slogging it through the cracked, dry earth. Still, it’s not an easy trek. With Morales rolled up in the tarp, there’s less to hold on to keep him balanced properly. Boone has to stop several times to readjust, but he’s afraid to handle the body too roughly in case he breaks something. The road leaves them more exposed too and that makes Boone uncomfortable, even though they’d done a sweep of the area before going for the corpse and found nothing. 

They’re two-thirds of the way back to the checkpoint when he hears the first bullet whiz by. Cursing, he turns and heaves the body off his shoulders, taking off for the rock outcropping that Six is already beelining for. Six is taking shots as they run, trying to keep the heat off Boone so he can make it to cover. The Fiends in the distance duck back behind the building for a moment, but Boone knows it won’t be long before they press their advantage. One shooter with a 10 millimeter isn’t much of a threat. 

They reach the rock outcropping unharmed. Six holsters their pistol momentarily so they can unsling Boone’s rifle and hand it over. The checkpoint is close enough that the NCR soldiers manning it can engage too; their gunfire evens the playing field a little bit. Boone and Six take opposite sides of the cover so they can shoot without stumbling over each other. 

Six gets one in the shoulder; another goes down, probably courtesy of one of the NCR soldiers. A crack shot, whoever it is. Boone leans out to take aim and notices the movement at the corner of his eye too late. 

Something slams into his side under his raised arm, knocking him to the ground as hard as a baseball bat to the ribs. His rifle clatters from his fingers. Boone tries to scramble up but collapses again when white-hot pain rips through his torso. Even breathing makes him grit his teeth in agony.

“Boone! _Shit!”_ he hears dimly. He can’t turn his head enough to see, but he feels Six pass by him. A few more shots are exchanged; finally, Six appears in his vision, looking frantic. 

“That’s a lot of blood. _Shit,_ Boone, you probably can’t even stand, can you? No, don’t try, just - just lay down, okay, let me put pressure on it.” 

Six leans over and presses their hands to Boone’s ribcage, over the wound. The pain is so intense that Boone’s vision flashes black; he holds onto consciousness just barely, scared to let himself pass out. 

Six is speaking. Boone can’t make out what they’re saying. Dust kicks up around them as someone approaches; he can’t do anything but flinch. More speaking. His eyes are too heavy to keep open. Finally, somebody slips an arm underneath his torso, and the agony of being lifted is too much. He slips into darkness. 

\--

Flashes of consciousness come to him, interspersed with long periods of nothing. It hurts to open his eyes, but he tries anyway. The tan ceiling of a tent. The pinch of a needle in his arm. A doctor with bright blonde hair that looks strangely familiar.

Another flash - Six’s concerned face. They ask something, but Boone can’t remember what it is. 

At one point, he thinks he hears a conversation being held over him. Six’s voice. 

“-need somebody to come with me --better to leave him here-”

A male. “-not a good idea-” 

Six again. “-not really a choice, Arcade.” 

Another pinch. He falls back into darkness. 

\--

When he finally wakes for good, it’s to the inside of a tent again, unlit except for a single lantern perched atop a table in the far corner. His ribs on the right side feel like somebody tried to break them with a sledgehammer. When he pushes himself up to a sitting position and probes tenderly, he finds his whole torso swathed in bandages. 

There’s a woman in a white lab coat dozing in the corner, her mohawked head propped up on one hand. At the rustling of him sitting up, she blinks awake and mashes the heel of one hand into her eye. 

“Wow.” she says, looking impressed. “I didn’t expect you to wake up that early. You took quite a hit out there.” 

Boone rubs at his crusty eyes and attempts to summon up some spit for his dry mouth. It feels like he tried to swallow sand. 

“Where am I?” he asks when he can finally speak. The woman has gotten up and is now fiddling with the buttons on his IV machine, checking the placement of the needle in his hand. 

“You’re in the Old Mormon Fort. My name is Julie Farkas. The NCR brought you here from McCarran after it was clear they didn’t have the know-how to treat your gunshot wound. I’d have some commentary on that, but the truth is you nearly didn’t make it anyway. Still, you’re stable now, and you’ll make a full recovery.” 

Old Mormon Fort? That meant the Followers. Strange. He’s heard stories of them, knows plenty of NCR who sing their praises, just never really interacted with them himself. He wonders if all their doctors look like Julie. 

“And Six?” he asks. The doctor’s mouth twists; she suddenly becomes very intent on jotting something down on her clipboard. When it becomes clear that Boone isn’t going to let his question go, she gives in and answers. 

“They left. They said there was something that they needed to do, and that you wouldn’t approve of it. They also said to tell you they were sorry, if that’s any consolation. I didn’t ask any more details.” 

So Boone hadn’t been making up Six’s suspicious behavior. They really were hiding something. Boone realizes he’s frowning at the doctor, and that she’s noticed and is uncomfortably staring at his chart to avoid his gaze. He turns his attention to the IV in the back of his hand, presses down on the entry point, and pulls it out. Julie looks up, watches with disappointment as he starts rooting around for his boots. She doesn’t try to stop him, though. The Followers treat mostly drug addicts and criminals; this is probably the normal ending to the story for her. 

“Where did they go?” he asks as he finds his boots and tugs them on, one at a time. Moving makes his side hurt, but it’s the hurt of healing and of bruises, not of serious damage that would keep him bedridden. The worst is past - he just needs to be careful until he’s at 100% again. 

“I don’t know. Like I said, they didn’t tell me and I didn’t ask. When they left, the two of them headed southeast.” 

His pack, rifle, and beret are stacked on the table in the corner. Boone pulls his beret on, tears through the pack pragmatically to see that everything’s still there. All his supplies, plus a pouch of a thousand caps that he hadn’t had before. A fully stocked medical kit in a plastic case is lying next to his things. He takes it, shoves it into his pack. He’ll need food to take with him. 

“Two of them? Who’s the other?” he asks as he works. Could be a clue. He’ll need all the information he can get. 

“They took one of my researchers with them. Arcade Gannon. I’m not sure why, I don’t think they even knew each other before you were brought here.” 

The name doesn’t mean anything to him, but he does get a flash of blonde hair and glasses in his memory. The man Six had been speaking to before? Probably. 

“Owe you anything?” he asks, tugging the pack on. Julie purses her lips, as if to keep herself from admonishing him for what he’s about to do. He appreciates it; not time to get into an argument over something that meaningless. His well-being isn’t relevant. 

“I ask all my patients to repay us by not doing anything stupid and getting themselves killed. Is that something you can handle?” she asks. Boone shrugs, picks up his rifle. 

_I’m already dead. Just haven’t stopped breathing yet,_ he thinks. “I’ll see what I can do. ...thanks. For patching me up.” 

Loose ends tied up, he turns for the tent flap and leaves. No use sticking around. 

The air outside is chilly, the sky overhead dark. The Followers’ camp is mostly dead, so it must be fairly late, whatever time it is. Doesn’t matter. He heads for the entrance. 

Boone’s no Ranger, but he’s had some training in tracking a target. He makes an educated guess that if Six was headed southeast, he’d have taken Highway 95. His hunch pays off when he hits the Grub ‘n’ Gulp rest stop in early morning, where the proprietor admits that he did see a tan-skinned person with long dark hair and a man with glasses come through a few days ago. Headed south, Boone gets. He keeps moving. 

The 188 Trading post says the same. A blonde man and a dark-haired person, headed south along 95. Boone finds evidence of somebody making camp in the El Dorado gas station where they’d stayed on the way up to Vegas. He stays there that night, having been near asleep on his feet for the last few miles of the trek, and checks his wound to make sure he hasn’t done anything to it. It’s fine, but healing slowly with the lack of adequate nutrition and rest. He does a shit job trying to rebandage it by himself. Not a problem. He’ll have time to care about that when he tracks Six down. 

Between Six’s nervousness earlier in the week and their sudden abandonment, Boone gets a very bad feeling about where all this is leading. He pushes the thoughts away as he hunkers down in his sleeping bag, shivering in the cold. The fitful sleep he suffers through does little to ease his fatigue. Once dawn breaks out over the horizon, he packs up and moves on. 

Cliff, in Novac, hasn’t seen hide nor hair of Six. Doc Straus admits tersely, after some persuasion and maybe a few threats against her supplier, that Six had bought some supplies off her a day or two prior. Where had they gone? Strauss doesn’t fucking know. South, probably? 

When he reaches the crossroads near Camp Searchlight, there’s nobody around that has seen a dark-haired person or a man with glasses. Boone has to make a decision. Does he follow his gut and assume the worst by heading east, or does he head west in hopes of a better answer? 

It’s not a hard decision, really. Boone isn’t a smart man, but he knows what people are like. He turns left at the crossroads and heads east. 

Cottonwood Cove is set down in a valley surrounded by hills, which makes it easy for a lone sniper to get in and do recon. All he has to do is avoid the Legion patrols in the area, and they’ve taken so much more territory going West that they’re complacent this far out. It’s not hard. Besides, he’s done this before.

He spreads out in a sheltered crag in the rocky face of a cliff, where he’s hidden from sight both from the front and from the top. No Legionaries are going to be stumbling in on him here. Pack set up as a rifle rest, he sights in on Cottonwood Cove and starts scanning. 

The nice thing about Legionaries is that they stick to the same clothing and color schemes. Makes picking out anybody who doesn’t belong easy. Two figures, neither dressed in the leg-baring skirts of the Legion, are making their way down towards the dock. The taller one has a shock of bright blonde hair that Boone recognizes vaguely and what looks like a white lab-coat; the shorter one is tan, wearing a leather chestplate and a faded linen shirt. He watches as they make their way down to the water and engage a Legionary in brief conversation. 

That’s it, then. Six is a Legion sympathizer. Boone shouldn’t be surprised. And yet, somehow he is. Something deep in his gut clenches painfully, making it hard for him to get a breath. He’d never actually asked what it was of Six’s that Benny had. Boone had figured Six for an outsider, no real allegiance to anybody, and that could be a bad thing with some people but it hadn’t felt that way with Six. Hadn’t felt like he was sharing a campfire with somebody that thought slavery and murder was the way to run the world. 

The two are getting into a boat, the Legionary already seated inside and ready to steer them to the Legion’s stronghold. It’s not too far to make the shot. Boone kicks his legs out wide, settles into position, lines up the sight - and stays there, finger frozen on the trigger. He can’t make the shot. He needs to, wants to, but he can’t.

It takes a long time for the dark head to disappear out from under his crosshairs. 

What the hell is wrong with him? Boone has never frozen like that before. Not even with Carla. But it’s been a long time since then. Boone’s become softer, _weaker_ since then. He knows what the right thing is, but memories of Six keep coming to him - their bright, infectious smile; the serious tilt of their head, sighting in on a target; the soft sound of their breathing in the dark. Boone doesn’t know how that person and the one in that boat can be the same person. But he’s been taken for a fool before. Looks like he has been again.

Six is the _worst_ kind of person, and yet Boone can’t shoot him. All he can do is lay here and hate himself for being a coward. 

Well, if Six really thinks this is the answer… they deserve what’s coming to them. The Legion will take what they feel is rightfully theirs, and leave what’s left to the dogs. Six might never be seen again. Boone hopes they never are, or he knows exactly what he’ll do. It would be the only thing he can do to redeem himself.

Six and Gannon have been out of sight for well over an hour by the time Boone finally packs up and makes his way back west. He doesn’t think much about what he’s going to do now; just as they had the last time he’d made this trek, he finds his feet leading him back to Novac without any conscious input from his brain. When he reaches the motel, he unlocks the door to his room woodenly, throws his things on the bed, and then fetches the rope from the cabinet. He lays it out across the floor, pre-tied noose carefully straightened out on one end, sits down on the carpet and looks at it. Instead of putting it back in the cabinet, as he’s done so many times before, he throws it in the sink, just under the thick metal pipe that crosses his bathroom ceiling. 

Cliff Briscoe is the only one to ask about Six, when Boone shows up asking for a bottle of whiskey. Boone’s cold, hostile stare convinces Cliff that asking that question again means a bad end for him; in return for not doing anything rash, Cliff gives him the whiskey for free, along with a six pack of bitter, watery beer that Boone downs one after another without pause. 

He gets very, very drunk. The more he drinks, the more the world fades around the edges, going quiet and slow. He sits at his small, shitty table, in his small, shitty room and thinks that he wishes it could be this quiet and slow all the time. 

Damn Six. Damn Manny. Damn Jeannie May, and Caesar, and the Legion, and every other son of a bitch walking this earth that takes life away from the people that deserve it. And damn himself too. He’s taken away his own share of innocent lives. He wants to meet the callous, uncaring bastard of a higher power that lets him walk around free while other people suffer and die.

Boone takes a long pull from the whiskey - and only air meets his lips. The bottle is empty. 

He tosses it on the floor. 

He pushes up from the table heavily. Stumbles over his own feet. 

He grabs the rope. The room spins nearly out of control as he flings the knotted end over the metal pipe and wraps the loose end around the bed railing. Once. Twice. Tie it tight, so it doesn’t slip. Might pull the bed a bit, but it should work. 

He drags over the chair from the table. 

Boone wants to sleep forever. He wants the world to stay soft and slow always, to be alone and away from all the people he can’t take care of, the people that he fails. To be away from everything that’s ever happened to him. He wants to feel just like he does in the hours after he passes out and before he wakes up, hungover, crouched over the toilet and forced to endure every roiling inch of being alive. 

This will get him there. 

He doesn’t even kick the chair over himself. He simply loses balance and falls, body making the decision where his brain might have hesitated. The rope is searing pain across his neck, eyes watering from the pain – 

\- And then he crashes to the ground in a heap, coughing and shaking. His vision is completely dark for a few long, agonizing minutes. 

Above him, the rope hangs, two sides of the noose split cleanly down the middle as if someone had taken a knife to it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter 5 warnings: someone gets shot. Suicidal ideation. Alcohol abuse. A suicide attempt described in real time.
> 
> Non-graphic summary: After Boone sees Six and Arcade in Cottonwood Cove going to the Legion's stronghold, he returns to Novac. He gets very drunk and attempts suicide. The attempt fails because someone has taken a knife to his rope.
> 
> Re: this chapter - I know that there is fierce debate about the practice of describing suicide attempts in detail. There's good evidence that even mentioning attempts in media further increases the number of suicide attempts. As someone that experiences suicidal ideation, I acknowledge this issue while also realizing that for me personally, being vague about the topic of suicide is not helpful. I don't live in a world of vague memories.
> 
> This is one moment in Boone's life. It is not where he started nor is it where he will end. It's merely something he has to get through to reach his happy ending. Keep holding on.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Since that last chapter sucked, you get another. As a treat.

He drifts in and out of consciousness from then on, sobering up just enough to go to Cliff for more booze and not leaving his hotel room otherwise. He doesn’t return to his shifts in the Dinosaur. He just drinks, drinks, forgets to eat, and increasingly finds himself splayed out across the floor, staring at the rope hanging from the pipe. Did he cut it? Did he know what was about to happen and try to stop it? He can’t remember. 

He couldn’t say how many days it’s been when he hears the knocking on his door. He’s too drunk to even get up and answer if he wanted to; just shifting makes his head spin. The room has a sour smell to it nowadays; Boone thinks he may have vomited in here somewhere at one point, but he’s forgotten where. 

The knocking turns into pounding. Boone squeezes his eyes shut, trying to cut down on the pain flashing through his head from the noise. The banging finally stops, and he’s able to sigh in relief. 

He doesn’t realize until too late what the quiet clicking is coming from the door. With a whoosh, Boone feels it swing open, sees how the fading sunlight from the setting sun appears across the top half of the room. He’s been laying on the floor for hours now, unmoving; the first time he tries to push to his feet he loses balance and comes crashing back down, but the second time he manages to stay standing.

The immense rush of pure rage he gets at seeing Six’s face chases away most of the nausea and stops the swaying. They there in the doorway, bobby pin and screwdriver in hand, and watch Boone. The familiar concerned crease between their eyebrows makes an appearance. Boone sights in on it, the audacity of such a fake manipulative fucking emotion, and feels the rage start to boil over. 

“You need to leave.” he says in a dangerously quiet tone of voice. It’s difficult to talk – his throat feels like it’s been torn in half and sewn back together.

Six doesn’t move. Boone stalks forward, a snarl on his lips, and brings his face so close to Six’s that they nearly bump noses. 

“ _Get. Out.”_

“Can we talk?” Six replies quietly. They pocket the screwdriver and fidget with the bobby pin, their long hands turning the small piece of metal over and over again. Boone feels his shoulders tense up and his right hand curl into a fist, aching to sink itself into Six’s nose. He’s not sure why he doesn’t. If he could remember where he left his rifle, he’d be going for it right now. 

“If you don’t leave, I’m going to do something I won’t regret.” he warns. Boone should just kill them. He should grab the combat knife stabbed into the table and slit their throat, drive it into Six’s gut, let their innards spill out and leave them to die a slow, horrible death. It would still be less than they deserve. 

Six takes one last look at him and flees. Boone slams the door shut behind her and stumbles for the table, where his whiskey is waiting.

He drinks to the point of throwing up again, and then drinks some more to replace what he’s thrown up. He doesn’t realize he’d forgotten to lock the door behind Six until he wakes up to a large form leaning over him. 

Boone has the stranger face down on the floor in a clumsy, drunken arm lock within seconds. It’s not until he’s grabbing for his knife that he stops to take a look at the man below him. The face smashed into the floor is pale and familiar, with a shock of neatly-combed white-blond hair and dark-rimmed glasses. 

“Somehow, this is not the welcome I was expecting.” the man mutters into the carpet. “Silly me.” 

Boone’s knife is still driven tip-first into the table, out of easy reach. That’s probably the only reason Gannon isn’t dead yet. Boone leans his knee into the stranger’s back, mussing up his white labcoat and inciting a grunt of pain, before he lets go and stumbles away, clutching at his head. He feels like it’s going to explode. Boone reaches out blindly for the bed and collapses onto it. 

“Surprisingly, you’re still not the worst patient I’d had the pleasure of tending to. _Nihil novi sub sole,_ I suppose. _”_ the man says, surprisingly calmly. “Are you interested in not feeling like your head is cracking in half?” 

Boone looks up to see that the man has a vial of med-x in one hand. He thinks about chasing the doctor out, but he feels so wretched that all he can think about is the relief the medicine will bring. Grunting, Boone holds out his arm and lets the doctor slide the needle into his vein. The med-x spreads through his body in waves, leaving him exhausted and weak but more clear-headed. 

“Excellent. Can you feel all your limbs? How many fingers am I holding up?” Boone looks up, assumes it’s a joke because Arcade isn’t holding any fingers up. Instead, the doctor peels his eyelid back and scrutinizes him with a thoughtful frown. His eyes flick down to Boone’s neck only for a split second, so quick Boone almost wonders if he imagines it. “Well, looks like no real damage done. But maybe take it a little easier next time? Livers don’t grow on trees, not that we have any trees around here to experiment with.” 

Boone swats his hand away. Arcade doesn’t take offense, just ambles over to a chair in the corner and sits patiently. 

“Six, once they were able to speak coherently, informed me that there’s a slight misunderstanding between you two. They asked me to step in. Something about bodily harm aimed in their direction.” 

_Damn right._ Boone thinks sourly. He should have taken the shot. Six is too clever to be working with the Legion - their returning unscathed is proof of that. Who knows what kind of damage they’ve already done, might do in the future to innocent people. 

Boone still has time. If Six is still here… he’ll put a bullet in Six’s head and take them down. For good, this time. 

“-are you listening to me?” Boone snaps back to the present, realizes the doctor has been prattling on while he’s deep in thought. Not like Boone owes him his attention. 

“...were you saying something worth listening to?” 

Arcade sighs and presses at his temples. He’s clearly frustrated with the situation. Boone has no pity. He’d thought better of the Followers before meeting this sham. Thought Caesar was an exception in their group, not the rule. 

“Let me say it again. Please listen this time.” Arcade starts, fixing his gaze on Boone. “You seem to be under the impression that Six is working for the Legion. That impression is wrong.”

He feels the anger start gnawing away at his insides again. Does this man think he’s _stupid?_ What else do you call it when somebody walks into a Legion camp, allegedly meets with Caesar himself, and then returns to the Mojave completely unharmed? Just because Six isn’t running around in a skirt with a coyote on their head doesn’t mean they’re not working for the Legion. 

“I don’t know the whole story, but there was something there Six needed to get, and they needed to play the game to get in and out of the Fort safely. I was with them almost the whole time - I can guarantee there’s no funny business going down.” 

“And who the fuck are you to me, exactly?” Boone snaps back. His grip on the bedspread is so tight his knuckles are white. 

Arcade sighs, as if Boone is a small and unruly child. “You’re a stubborn man, aren’t you? If you want to ignore the truth, fine. Just don’t take it out on Six – they’re not holding up very well. I’m not either, if we’re being honest. We could have been crossing the Phlegethon and I wouldn’t have noticed any difference.”

Arcade digs another Med-x syringe from his pocket and throws it down onto the table carelessly. Then he stands and beelines for the door. 

“Next time you take a shower - and I hope against all odds that that time is soon - you should try excavating your head from your ass. Just a suggestion.” With that, the doctor is gone.

Boone picks up an empty whiskey bottle, throws it across the room. It shatters with a satisfying sound. He looks for another, but there’s nothing in reach. Sighing, he buries his face in his hands. 

It’s all so damn complicated. Carla. Bitter Springs. The Legion. Six. New Vegas. They meld together, form connections, spin around in his brain like a sick carousel. 

Playing the game? Can he believe that? Can he look a person in the face that’s stood in front of Caesar and believe they’re not with those sick fucks? 

A door slams above him. A voice - low, masculine, unintelligible. 

His room and the one above are connected through an air vent. Used to drive him crazy, trying to take a shower and hearing people’s voices through the vent in the bathroom. Maybe now it’ll come in handy. 

He pushes the bathroom door open, crawls up on top of the toilet unsteadily. The vent is just a foot or two above him, close enough to easily hear the conversation being had. 

“-don’t see why you bother.” he hears. A shuffling, silence. 

“Of course you see.” Six’s voice. A grudging noise of acknowledgement from Arcade. “I found that noose the first time I came through, when he asked me to help him. You telling me you could have walked away from that?” 

Boone shifts and presses a hand flat against the wall to keep himself upright. It’s not easy balancing on top of a toilet for long stretches of time, especially in his state. 

“...I see what you mean.” a long exhale. “I think he’ll come around, once he’s done drinking himself into a stupor. I suppose I can see how he might have come to the conclusion he did, if I try to imagine it from his perspective.” 

More silence. Then, a shuddering exhale, followed by a dry, broken sob. Arcade starts muttering something nonsensical and soothing. Boone climbs down from off of the toilet. 

It’s a hard call. People don’t just walk out of the Fort alive after meeting with Caesar himself. He’s watched Six charm information and trust out of people they’ve only just met too many times. Boone would be foolish to think Six isn’t doing the same to him right now. All of his squadmates in the NCR had known he had a soft spot, if you talked to him right. Couldn’t hold some people responsible for anything. Manny had told him a thousand times that he let Carla walk all over him, that he needed to man up and tell her ‘no’ once in a while. If they could figure it out, Six already has for sure. 

But. 

He doesn’t operate without proof. He didn’t see what happened at the Fort. If Six is telling the truth and Boone kills them, then them blood would be on Boone’s hands. If Six is lying...if Six is lying, Boone isn’t going to let them get away with it. 

There’s only one decision. Stay with them and figure out their game. If they’ve been lying to Boone, Boone will put them down. 

\--

He wakes up to more knocking on the door. This time, when he actually opens it, it’s Six, holding a place of Brahmin steak and eggs and looking as nervous as nervous can be. 

“Brought breakfast. I’ve been told by a reliable source that you haven’t eaten in a while.” 

Boone’s stomach takes that moment to let out a pitiful rumble. Traitor, he thinks sourly. 

He lets Six in without a word, then turns on his heel and heads to the bathroom. Six doesn’t protest. 

Boone pisses, looks at the shower, then starts undressing. Six can wait. He needs to get the stink of not washing for a week off of himself.

Freshly scrubbed, dressed in a relatively clean pair of pants and faded shirt, he emerges from the bathroom to find Six has thrown the curtains wide and is staring out the window from their seat at the table, as if in a trance. They jerk out of it when Boone drags a chair out and sits down. Six pushes the plate of food (a peace offering?) towards him and gestures at him to eat. Boone doesn’t so much as glance at the plate.

“We need to talk.” 

Six sighs, bows their head in submission. 

“If there’s one thing I won’t tolerate, it’s working with some _dog_ of the Legion.” he says coldly. “ _This_ stops right now.” 

“I understand why you’re angry.” they say quietly. “I knew you would be, which is why I was so afraid to tell you. But you have to understand -” 

“Then explain.” Boone interrupts, in no mood to listen to the man wax eloquent. Six sets an elbow on the table, leans their forehead on their hand so they’re looking down at the scarred wood rather than at Boone. 

“I told you in Vegas that Benny took the chip I was supposed to get back and disappeared. A frumentarii came to the Strip, right after Benny split, and gave me Caesar’s mark. He said Caesar wanted to meet me, and that Benny was headed to the Fort. So I knew if I was going to get the chip, the only way I could do it was to go there and meet with Caesar. Boone, I’m not a Legion sympathizer. They’re sick and what they do is wrong. The whole time I was there, I just -” they stop and swallow visibly. When they start again, their voice is trembling just a little. 

“The chip is some sort of data to upgrade the securitron’s capabilities in New Vegas. Caesar knew that I was working for Mr. House, so he wanted me to take the chip and destroy whatever was on it instead of installing the upgrade. And then he made me...made me kill Benny.” 

Six seems to barely get those last words out. Despite the fact that Benny had shot Six in the head and left them for dead, Six sounds sincerely upset about Benny’s death. Boone can’t pretend to know what it means for two people to sleep together if they’re not in love, but he guesses if you make that kind of connection, turning around and killing that person would be hard to do. 

“So you destroyed the data? For the Legion?” he asks. Six shakes their head. 

“I uploaded it, like Mr. House asked. They just assumed I destroyed it and let me go. Whatever you may think of me, I’m not here to help the Legion. I’m certainly not here to let them destroy something as grand as New Vegas.” 

_Grand?_ That’s a strong word for it. New Vegas has always been a thorn in the NCR’s side - they struggle to hold the area specifically because they have to pour so many resources into protecting New Vegas, a town that gives them precious little in exchange. New Vegas might just be the reason they lose the Dam, in fact, and the Dam is the only thing keeping the NCR alive. There’s not much that’s grand about that. Thousands of people will be left unprotected if the NCR falls. 

“Why are you even involved in this?” he asks scornfully. “What are you getting out of it?” 

For the first time since the conversation started, Six gets a little of their old humour back and lets out an amused huff. 

“Not really a damn thing.” they admit with a wry smile. “But what else am I supposed to do?” 

“Go back to your life before you delivered that package?” he suggests. _That’s what I did. ...guess that wouldn’t make it sound like a very good option,_ he thinks, glancing around at his disaster of a room. 

The smile wipes off Six’s face at that suggestion, shockingly quickly. 

“…I can’t.” they say softly. “I don’t remember. Before being shot. Hard to go back, in that case.”

“…oh.” Well. That would make it difficult. “Nothing at all?”

Six purses their lips. One broad hand scratches absently at the knife guard on their forearm, then slides down to the exposed skin at their wrist.

“That might almost be easier.” they say. Pauses. “Have you heard of the Hualapai?”

Boone shakes his head no. Six snorts, amused in sort of a tired way.

“No one ever has. I don’t even know why I ask. We used to live near the Colorado River and in a place called Peach Springs. Since before America was even a country. It’s not an easy place to live – the river means that someone was always trying to run us off or stamp us out – but we had agreements with the other groups and tribes, and the land was good to us.

“The last thing I remember is having a birthday party for my niece. She was just turning one. I was maybe 18. I remember falling asleep that night. After that, nothing. Just waking up in Goodsprings with a hole in my head. Ten years of memories, gone just like that.”

Boone doesn’t know what to say to that. He tries, “Must have been a hell of a hole.”

Dark, but it gets a chuckle out of Six. Considering their surroundings, dark is fitting anyway.

Boone doesn’t know much about the land east of NCR territory. He wasn’t even aware there were any groups left that could trace their lineage back to pre-war times, let alone pre-America. But there’s not much news coming from that direction these days. And for good reason.

He doesn’t want to ask the question. There’s only one answer for what happened to Six’s people. Six sees the thought in his eyes though, and answers without being prompted.

“I don’t know, Boone. But according to people who knew me before, I’ve been working as a courier for years. If there was anything to go back to, that wouldn’t be the case.”

Shit. That’s probably true. Must be terrible not to know for certain, though. One of Boone’s most reoccurring nightmares is shooting at Carla and missing, having to wonder whether his wife and child are still out there, suffering. But information is like water in this place – it’s precious and dries up in the wind in no time at all. If anyone knows what happened to Six’s tribe, they probably aren’t around to say.

Boone remembers the plate of food at his elbow and starts to eat, just for something to do with his hands. Six watches him, looking almost wistful. Having an audience makes him curl over his food uncomfortably.

Six asks, “So...are you staying? In Novac, I mean?” 

Boone swallows a bite of brahmin, throat dry as the Mojave outside. Wishes he had his canteen to wash it down with. It’s here, somewhere in the room, probably, but he doesn’t have the first idea where to look. 

If Six’s story is true, they probably have no love for the Legion. But Boone’s heard stranger tales in the desert than people pledging loyalty to groups that wiped their family out. Boone isn’t quite ready to believe Six is innocent. Not yet. He has a responsibility to find out the truth.

“I’ll come with you.” He says quietly, pushing the empty plate away. Despite the grim atmosphere and the sour smell in the air, Six finds it in themself to grace Boone with a small smile.

“I’m glad to hear that. Arcade is great, but I missed having my sharpshooter at my back.” Six pushes up from the table and heads for the door. Stops with their hand on the handle, looks around at the dank room. “...there’s a spare bed in the room I have. If you want it. Might be...more comfortable.” 

\--

Boone tells himself, when he shows up at Six’s door with his things, that he’s doing it because he needs to keep an eye on Six. Nothing to do with the noose still hanging in the bathroom.

Six let him in and disappears into the bathroom as Boone is stacking his things besides the second bed. The sound of water running trickles into the room. Boone collapses on the bed and stares up at the ceiling, wondering if he’s making the right decision.

On one hand, Six might be a Legion sympathizer. Boone won’t leave until he knows whether that’s true. On the other hand…

On the other hand, Boone won’t soon forget the conversation he’d overheard in the bathroom. Six might be asking him to tag along out of pity. Them being a Legion sympathizer would almost be better than that.

The last thing he has left after his suicide attempt is a thin sliver of pride, that even if he’s a wreck of a human being, he’s a wreck that can hit a mark at 800 yards. Boone’s glad that Six isn’t better with a rifle, or that excuse would get blown clean out of the water. He won’t stand to be pitied. He needs what little shred of dignity he’s got left.

And he’s done with alcohol. Permanently. All it’s ever done is make a fool out of him. Boone knows that’s an easier promise to keep now when he’s still green around the gills than it will be in a few days’ time, but he’s endured worse. He can do this.

The water stops. After a few minutes, the bathroom door creaks open. Boone sees Six turn to look at themself in the mirror out of the corner of one eye, rubbing their damp hair with a faded towel. They’re not wearing their matching pajamas this time – instead, they’ve got on a faded t-shirt with the sleeves cut off and a pair of old shorts. It’s strange to see their knobbly knees on display. Six chucks the towel on top of their dirty clothes and bundles all of it together, staring down at the cloth. They look at it all for a strangely long time.

Finally, Six turns from the mirror. Boone glances away hurriedly, not wanting to get caught staring. When he looks again, more furtively this time, his eyes catch on the inside of Six’s forearm.

Ropes of ugly scar tissue slice through the skin from elbow to wrist, exactly the area that Six normally keeps covered with their knife guards or long sleeves. Boone hadn’t thought much of it – it’s good practice for a hot, lawless place like the Mojave, even if you’re as dark as Six is. The severity of the scar tissue means the fresh wounds were either left to heal without intervention, or they were so deep that even a stimpack couldn’t fully erase the evidence.

Six doesn’t look over or say anything about it, but somehow Boone knows that this is for him.

Maybe Six doesn’t pity him after all.

The embarrassed silence in the room lingers as they both struggle to fall asleep. But when Boone wakes up in the middle of the night to piss and sees an empty bathroom and Six’s slumbering form, all he feels is relief.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter 6 warnings: references to the suicide attempt of the previous chapter. Boone has some gory thoughts.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to everyone who's been kind enough to give kudos and comment! I'm forever grateful that you take the time to read my work.

Six offers for them to escort Gannon back to the Old Mormon Fort, but Gannon begs off in favor of a group of merchants headed that direction. Boone had tried to stab him with a knife, so he isn’t surprised. Six seems disappointed, though. Boone guesses they must be some kind of friends, if Gannon had agreed to travel to a Legion stronghold with them.

Boone’s side heals up fine once he stops sabotaging the healing with journeys across the desert and alcohol poisoning. Six tells him that the bullet had lodged in a rib, which is what stopped it from puncturing a vital organ and saved his life.

Since Six said they weren’t in a hurry to get back to New Vegas, they’re planning to stop at Fort Nelson on the way, ask about work. Even though it’s just down the road from Novac, Boone hasn’t been in years.

They take off in early morning, when they can make the trek before the heat of day really begins. A light breeze skims across the desert here and there. The sage brush shakes gently in the wind and gives off a soft perfume. Even walking into the sun isn’t that uncomfortable, since the sun is ambling up over the horizon in a slow, pondering sort of way.

Though walking through the gates of Novac with Six gives him a strange feeling of déjà vu, something is different this time around. Breathing in the chilly air, Boone feels miles away from the person he had been the last few days. He knows it won’t last. Still, it’s a wonder to trek down the broken highway, the sunlight warming his face, and feel – calm.

Halfway to Nelson, the peace is still holding. They haven’t seen anybody else on the road – no caravans, no travelers, no NCR. They should have run into someone by now. Slowly, the peaceful feeling fades into something more ominous.

“Gonna climb up that ridge and see what’s going on.” He says to Six, jabbing a thumb at a landmark a few hundred feet off the road. The climb isn’t easy with his body still recovering, but he finds out when he makes it to the top and sights in with his rifle that it was a good decision. Several thin trails of smoke are spiraling into the sky from the direction of Nelson. 

He climbs back down to the road and accepts his pack back from Six. “There’s smoke. Shouldn’t be, this time of day.” Boone explains. Six frowns and looks up the road, but they’re a ways from Nelson still, and the landscape holds no clues for them.

They head out more slowly this time, keeping an eye out around them. The answer comes to them half a mile away from Nelson proper, at a sandbag barrier abuzz with activity. There are NCR soldiers at it, but they’re aiming their scopes the wrong way. 

“Fucking goddamn shitstain Legionaries.” a PFC grits out in response to Six’s question. Boone doesn’t begrudge her the swearing, because a medic is in the middle of disinfecting a gunshot wound in her leg without anesthetic. “We just set up the fucking base at Nelson when they attacked. We couldn’t even get a radio out to Forlorn Hope or Ranger Station Echo before we were overrun.” 

The medic, without ceremony, plunges a pair of forceps into the gunshot wound in an attempt to dig the bullet out. Cursing, the PFC jerks up; Six grabs her shoulder and holds her down, and Boone offers her a hand to grip. The PFC takes it and squeezes so hard Boone thinks she might break his hand. 

“Almost got it… almost…. _There._ Fucker’s in one piece, thank God.” the medic holds up the bullet for the PFC to see, then flings it out into the desert. Panting, the PFC collapses and closes her eyes. Boone watches her pale, sweaty face as the medic binds the wound and rinses his hands off with water from a canteen. 

Only three soldiers man the barrier – the medic, the hurt PFC, and one more soldier that’s keeping watch over the sandbag barrier so they don’t get surprised by any Legion patrols. The PFC, despite her tough words, is shaking and unable to even stand – there’s no way they can get her all the way to Forlorn Hope without getting spotted and overrun by a Legion patrol. 

The medic says, “We don’t even know if anyone else made it out. They caught most of them alive. Poor sods.”

Christ. They have to do something. The PFC lets go of Boone’s hand, and he stands up and dumps his pack. Six is still kneeling by the PFC; they look up at Boone in question as Boone fishes a canteen out of his pack and squints up at the sky to get his bearings.

Boone explains shortly, “Even with us here, they can’t evacuate safely. I have the best chance of convincing them to send a squad, so I’ll run to Forlorn Hope for help. Give me your pistol.” 

Six unholsters their pistol without comment and offers it over, grip-first. Boone accepts it and the two extra clips that follow, then holds out his rifle. At Six’s hesitant look, Boone thrusts it closer to them.

“They’ll listen to a 1st Recon guy over a civilian. You put those sniper skills to use.” Boone explains. Six frowns, but eventually accepts the rifle. 

“Be careful out there.” They say seriously, eyes boring into Boone’s. Boone gives them a nod, then shoves the pistol into his belt and takes off. 

Nelson hadn’t been around when Boone was still in the NCR, so he’s never traveled this road before. But he knows where Forlorn Hope is, and he estimates that if he pushes it, he can get there in an hour and a half. Another two and a half, maybe three, to get back with a squad, and he’s looking at leaving them alone for almost five hours. But it’s the best he can do. 

Running through the desert is a stupid idea. The higher the sun gets into the sky, the more heat slithers up from the ground and wraps around him, trying to slow his steps. The cracked earth beneath his boots dips and swerves treacherously, hoping to trick him into stepping down wrong and breaking an ankle. He takes in a deep breath, tries to tap into that steady rhythm he’d learned in the NCR to keep his body in motion when it wanted to stop.

He doesn’t know if the Legion will send out patrols to mop up the survivors. Doesn’t know if he’ll run into one trying to get to Forlorn Hope or make it all the way back with reinforcements just to find a pile of corpses. But he can’t think about that, because he’s still weak from his extended drinking vacation and his injury, and it takes everything he has to keep going in the scorching heat. Every ounce of his awareness goes into watching for flashes of movement or red banners in the distance. He can feel the sweat running down the back of his neck and nearly sizzling off in the heat. The water left in his canteen disappears before he’s even halfway there. 

Somehow, he gets lucky. After what feels like hours and with no Legion sightings, he stumbles up to the front entrance of Forlorn Hope. His lungs feel like they’re filled with razor blades. Forcing himself to think, Boone tugs the beret off his head and waves it in the air to signal to the gate guards that he’s not a threat. One of the gate guards sights in on him while the other yells at him to stop. When he finally gets a chance to stand still, Boone can’t help but bend over and wheeze, grateful for a chance to return some oxygen to his screaming body.

“State your business.” a guard calls out. Boone takes one more deep breath against the protest of his aching lungs, straightens up as much as he can. 

“I’m Sergeant Boone, from 1st Recon.” he calls out. He has to say it again, because the first time comes out garbled and weak. “There’s been an attack on Nelson and the survivors are stranded with no backup on the road in. I need a squad to accompany me back to Highway 165 for transport.” 

They let him in, but it takes them more time than Boone had hoped to put together a squad. He has to wait for the reconnaissance team to verify his claim, then to verify his identity, and he expects somewhere a heated conversation is had about whether they can afford to send a squad into deadly territory for three soldiers. After two hours of waiting, he gets loaned a rifle and a squad of six other NCR soldiers, and they step out for Nelson.

It takes them over twice as long to get back to Highway 165 as it had taken for Boone to get to Forlorn Hope. He feels the uneasiness in his gut as they approach the highway. 

He’d left Six out there with barely any backup and a rifle 7 hours ago. It had seemed like a better idea that sending Six out into the desert alone, but the truth is that Boone gets people killed no matter how careful he thinks he’s being. He should be ready to come back to a corpse. He should be ready to look into Six’s lifeless eyes. He’s not though, has never been able to stomach the consequences he brings on other people.

Boone should never have agreed to go anywhere with Six. He should have let Six walk off into the sunset, because if they’d never had anything more to do with Boone, this never would have happened. 

They start climbing the final hill before the highway. The whole squad, knowing that they might find Legionaries on the other side, is tense and silent. Near the top, they pause in place and wait impatiently as a scout crawls up to the peak of the hill and glances over. When the scout gives the sign for ‘all-clear’, Boone nearly jumps out of his own skin with anticipation. Only his training keeps him from breaking formation. 

They crest the ridge. The scene before them is blanketed in twilight, the shadows making it hard to see the scene before them.

There are figures strewn across the ground in front of the sandbag barrier. The barrier itself is half-demolished, sand and pieces of canvas strewn across the asphalt. But then a figure raises its rifle and signals to them. It’s wearing an NCR uniform. Slowly, they make their way down to the barrier.

Boone sees a familiar tan figure slumped up against the sandbags with a sniper rifle propped up against their shoulder. He can’t tell if Six is breathing. What if they’re not breathing? Six’s face looks wan, and their eyes are closed, their body motionless.

There is a frenzy of activity as the squad disburses to take charge of the situation. Two take point to watch each side of the road. The medic the squad had brought with them moves immediately to the PFC with the gunshot wound and starts prepping her for transport. Boone, free to move now that they’re not in formation, beelines straight for Six. 

And is overwhelmingly relieved when Six’s eyes open at his approach. They’re dusty, sweaty, and streaked with blood, but alive. Tiredly, they glance up at Boone and raise a hand in greeting. 

“Took you long enough.” They say, eyes blinking tiredly. Yeah, Boone deserves that. Looking them over, Six appears to be pretty much in one piece. Boone offers them a hand up; when he pulls Six to standing, the person nearly topples over and collapses again from exhaustion and Boone has to catch them. Swaying, Six grips Boone around the shoulders, their face mashed into Boone’s neck, then slowly rocks back and manages to stay standing of their own volition. 

“Sorry. Dehydrated. Been too busy killing Legionaries.” they say, shaking their head. Wordlessly, Boone pulls his canteen from his belt and offers it over. Six takes it and drains the whole thing in one long pull. Then they wipe their mouth on the back of their wrist and give Boone a real smile. Jerks their head towards the bodies littering the asphalt in front of the sandbags. 

“Your lessons really paid off. A little intense for a first test, though. Let’s just hang some Legion armor on some dummies next time.” 

Boone accepts the canteen and his sniper rifle back, offers the loaned pistol in exchange. “Would be a letdown after all this excitement.” 

“Is this you excited? You’re an easy man to please, Craig Boone.” Woozily, Six stuffs their pistol back into its holster, and they turn to business. 

By the time the squad gets back to Forlorn Hope, it’s well past dark, and all of them are exhausted. They’d all taken turns carrying the stretcher with the wounded PFC on it, which was near impossible over the hills and dips of the Mojave. On top of that, they’re all so strung out by the constant adrenaline-fueled search for Legionary patrols that Boone and Six can barely keep their eyes open once the danger is past. Luckily, they only have to give a brief explanation before they’re pointed to a pair of empty cots in the corner of a tent. Six flops down onto theirs in full armour and is snoring before five minutes are up. Boone follows suit and is wearily grateful to find that sleep visits him quickly too. 

\--

_“This is your fault.”_

_Gritting his teeth, Boone presses the stained bandage down harder. The gaping wound pulses a fresh spurt of blood across his fingers. He looks up to accusatory eyes in a pallid green-gray face._

_“You knew this would happen.” Six says, as Boone scrambles to find more gauze to cover the wound. There is nothing. Boone shifts the bandage in his hand and catches a glimpse of the inside of Six’s stomach - violently red and glistening intestines, twitching grotesquely as he watches. The scent of death and rot snakes through the air. “You knew what would happen if you came with me. You knew I would die, and you did it anyway. Selfish.”_

_“Stay still. You’re going to be okay. Just focus on breathing.” Boone says desperately. The smell is making him sick to his stomach, as is the slick scarlet of his hands. “You’re going to make it.”_

_Six’s laugh is short and cruel. “You know I won’t. I’m dying, Boone. My death is going to be your fault. Just like those soldiers. Just like Carla’s. Just like all those innocent Khans. And you can’t even do the right thing and kill yourself. You selfish son of a bitch.”_

_Boone looks down and suddenly, the belly he presses his hands against is round and taut. Something kicks against the bandages weakly. Boone looks up into Carla’s waxy face, hopeful, but her eyes are blank and unseeing. Boone lifts the bandage - and stumbles backwards, shutting his eyes against the horror he finds there. It doesn’t help. The baby lets out an endless wail, plaintive and haunting._

_\--_

Gasping, Boone jerks awake - and falls into a heap on the floor. Rather than getting up, he just lays there and stares at the ceiling, trying to swallow down the taste of blood in his mouth. When he blinks, the dream flashes against his eyelids. Boone groans and rubs a grimy hand over his face. He doesn’t normally have nightmares when someone else is here.

Something above and to the left of him shifts. Six’s sleepy face appears over the edge of the cot, frowning down at him uncomprehendingly. Their lips are chapped from dehydration and red in one spot where the skin is split. The color turns Boone’s stomach. 

“Why are you on the floor?” Six asks. Boone doesn’t even try to answer.

Yawning, Six sits up slowly and mashes the heel of their hand into one brown eye. After a moment, Boone steels himself and does the same. Then he pushes to his feet and goes outside. 

The shaking in his hands lasts through the first cigarette and halfway through the second. The burn of the nicotine takes forever to cut through the haze. Even then, Boone isn’t sure the grittiness in his eyes or the ache in his legs is any better. The smoke sears his abused lungs and nearly doubles him over in a drawn-out coughing fit. 

He doesn’t know when they’d gone to bed, but it’s now well past sunrise, probably seven or eight in the morning. The camp is already alive with the sounds of marching soldiers, the call of cadence, the popping of a gun range in use. The scent of the chow hall drifts to him from somewhere. A private, hurrying by, catches Boone’s eye and nods respectfully. 

Christ. He needs a drink. Needs to fall face-first in a vat of whiskey. He wants to lay down and sleep, dreamless, forever. He wants to close his eyes without seeing someone’s corpse on the back of his eyelids. 

It doesn’t matter what he wants. This is what he deserves. Boone crushes out his cigarette stub, pockets it, and goes back into the tent. 

It’s been twenty minutes and Six has only graduated from lying down to sitting, dazed, on the edge of their cot. They have one boot off, bare foot dangling in the air, and a fresh pair of socks in their hands, but appear to be struggling to finish the task. Six isn’t much of a morning person. Boone isn’t either, but he’s spent so much of his life rolling out of bed and into motion at the sounds of Reveille that he couldn’t change now if he wanted to. 

Six jolts at Boone’s presence, looks down at the socks in their hand, and begins to tug one on with clumsy movements. Boone heaves his pack up onto his cot and digs through for a change of skivvies. He’s in desperate need of a shower, or at least a wipe-down, but that can wait until they’ve gotten their bearings. 

“That cot was the best sleep of my life. I’ll never be able to recreate it.” Six says, patting it fondly. “And I bet the coffee I’m about to get at breakfast will be the best coffee I’ve ever had too.” 

Boone yanks his sweat-stained t-shirt over his head and replaces it with a fresh one. He’s still only half-present, trying to push those images out of his mind. “Don’t count on it.” 

His tone must be harsher than usual, because Six pauses and glances up at him, then drops the subject. Boone immediately regrets his comment - he’s not much of a talker, but he doesn’t mind so much when Six fills up the quiet with chatter. Now there’s just uncomfortable silence. 

A corporal comes to find them in the chow hall as Six is wolfing down a plate of powdered eggs and toast and Boone is eating his own mechanically. The corporal looks as haggard around the edges as everyone else at Forlorn Hope does. 

“The Major wants to see you, Sergeant. He’s in the command tent. Said to come as soon as you’re done with chow.” the corporal says. Boone nods, and the corporal hurries off. 

Boone had never worked with Major Polatli, but he knows what he looks like. He and Six wait patiently to one side of the command tent as the mustachioed man finishes up a meeting with several other officers. The Major looks up, spots them, and waves them over. He doesn’t even bother with pleasantries.

“I don’t know what I did to get blessed with a decorated 1st Recon soldier right in the middle of this shitshow, but I won’t look a gift horse in the mouth. If you’re up to it, we could use your help again. We need to retake Nelson.” 

Six looks startled. “You mean the base that’s _literally overrun_ with Legionaries? You’re not in any condition to take them on!” 

Major Polatli’s mustache bristles. “We have our best analysts on the job, and they believe that with the right strategy, we can retake the base and minimize our losses. Having the Legion control an NCR stronghold so close to our other bases, especially with those crucified soldiers on display for God and everyone else to see, is bad both for morale and strategy.” His next words are to Boone specifically. “But it’s up to you, son. With what happened at Bitter Springs, we don’t have any right to ask any more of you.” 

The major’s dark eyes settle on Boone’s face, his look solemn and knowing. Boone feels something in the back of his mind go ominously quiet. His brain doesn’t know which part of Polatli’s words to jump to. Then a hand settles on his shoulder, light but firm, and Boone lets out a breath. 

“What do you think? It’s up to you.” Six says lowly, looking at Boone. Boone feels the paralysis of indecision settle into his limbs and freeze his throat. But, because he knows he has to, he lifts his chin and nods once, jerkily. Six’s hand squeezes and drops away from his shoulder. 

Polatli returns the nod and turns away towards the map on the table in the middle of the tent. Like any good commander, he has the decency to accept Boone’s answer without commenting on his hesitation. Instead, he scans the map and then taps one of the neat black x’s drawn on it with a finger. 

“Meet Sergeant Cooper here, just outside Nelson. He’ll be spearheading the charge. Dismissed.” 

Boone turns on his heel automatically and leaves the tent. Six follows. 

The both of them are tired from dehydration and lack of rest, but they don’t waste any time getting ready and striking out for the rendezvous spot with Sergeant Cooper. Through the trip, Six glances at Boone every few minutes, looking like they want to ask something, but never does. Boone doesn’t offer up any information. If he moves his attention from what’s coming, he’ll lose his nerve, or screw something up. He can’t afford to be divided in his attentions when people’s lives are at stake. Maybe Six gets it, or maybe she doesn’t, but she doesn’t push. 

They set a fast clip and catch sight of Sergeant Cooper’s squad exactly where the Major had said they would be. The sergeant, a young woman with clear goggles over her eyes and a shemagh pulled up over her mouth, motions them over and gives them a quick run-down. 

“We’re attacking from the north, but we have units up on the ridge to the east and coming in the other entry points as well. Our focus is on taking out the leader, Dead Sea. We’ve also heard there are NCR hostages somewhere in the camp.” the sergeant’s eyes meet Boone’s. “As our sniper, you’re responsible for taking care of them if you can get a bead on them.”

Six opens their mouth, outraged, but the sergeant turns away before they can say anything and waves them into motion. He and Six make their way quietly up the nearest ridge to a good vantage point, where they can cover the assault. Six is cradling their own sniper rifle, a loan like the one Boone had carried the day before. They settle down onto the ground and sight in. 

Boone doesn’t mind going up close and dirty with a pack of Legionaries, but this is his favourite way to fight. He’s the quiet, slow-thinking type. Behind the scope of a sniper rifle, Boone has the time he needs to make his decisions, the quiet to surround himself in and internalize. He can search out the stillness in the chaos of battle. And most importantly, he can lose himself in the space between breaths, when the whole world narrows to the slow steady contraction of his index finger on the trigger. Nothing more. Just one shot, one kill. 

_Bang._ A Legionary falls to the dirt. A surprise, to see the effects of his work. He ejects the spent round and chambers another. It’s a bit faster, working in the middle of a firefight, but not undoable. Just a little extra challenge. The crosshairs of his scope settle in on another leather-covered torso. 

_Bang._

“Boone.” Six says quietly, pulling him from his rhythm. Boone looks over to him. Six’s face is pinched and unhappy. 

“You see them? Right in the middle, there?” 

Boone settles back down and sweeps the area with his scope. The battle has started in earnest now. He spots what Six is talking about immediately and feels every shred of calm in his chest dissipate. 

It’s too damn easy to make out the details of the NCR hostages - their downturned heads, the blood trickling from their pierced hands, the bleached wood of the crosses. The Legionaries work day and night to put those damned things up, knowing how bad they shake the rest of the soldiers. The soldiers have been stripped to their undershirts and trousers, their feet bare and resting on a support nailed into the crosses. As Boone watches, one of them blinks slowly and tries to lift his head, but it’s clearly too much effort in his weakened state.

He’s seen this so many times. It never gets easier. He tries not to look at their faces, doesn’t want them in his dreams, but a headshot is the easiest and most humane way to kill them. So he has to. He has to look. 

Something blacks out his scope and pulls the barrel off to the side. Boone curses and jolts backwards, but it’s not an enemy; just Six, scowling at him. The way their sweat has trickled through the dust on their face makes it look like war paint. 

“You don’t have to do this, Boone.” Six says lowly. “You’re not part of the NCR anymore. You can make a choice.” 

“Let go.” Boone says. Six doesn’t. Boone feels a strange kind of panic bubble up in the back of his throat. “Six. _Let go.”_

“No.” Six says. Quietly. Firmly. “Listen to me. You can go down there and save those hostages. I’m not saying this because what you did before was wrong. But if you want to, you can make that choice.” 

“There isn’t a goddamn choice.” Boone snaps, curling his hand into a fist. “They’re _going to die,_ Six. We can’t save them. The best thing to do is put them out of their misery. It’s what they would want.” 

Abruptly, Six stands up, slings their rifle across their back, and pulls their pistol instead. 

“Try to shoot the Legionaries and not me while I’m down there, alright? I’ll know it was on purpose, Mr. Crack Shot.” Six flashes him a strange smile and disappears down the side of the ridge, towards Nelson. 

They’re going to try to save the hostages. Six is going to get themself killed trying to save the goddamn hostages. Six’s bloody face from the dream flashes through his head. 

Boone could take them all out before Six even gets close. He should. They’re suffering. If it were Boone up there, he’d want someone to show him mercy and let him die. And then Six wouldn’t charge recklessly through the battle, and they might not die. 

With an angry sound, Boone slams one hand into the dirt, then settles back into position. He can clear the way, so Six can get to them safely. He sees a legionnaire peek around a corner just by the entrance to the camp, waiting for an unsuspecting idiot in leather armor to come charging in. 

Boone inhales, exhales, and pulls the trigger.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter 7 warnings: Boone has several depressive thoughts about getting people killed. Depiction of someone getting a bullet wound treated. Boone has a graphic nightmare about Six, Carla, and Carla's unborn baby dying. Boone has thoughts relating to his alcoholism. There's a canon compliant depiction of the NCR hostages the Legion crucified at Fort Nelson.
> 
> The cursing PFC with the leg wound in this chapter is so far my favourite character.


End file.
